A dreamer's tales

A DREAMER'S TALES

BY

LORD DUNSANY

AUTHOR OF "THE SWORD OF WELLERAN
"TIME AND THE GODS," ETC.

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & SONS

44 & 45 RATHBONE PLACE

[All rights reserved]

PR

6001

Printed by BALLANTYNR, HANSON .V Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

PREFACE

I HOPE for this book that it may come
into the hands of those that were kind
to my others and that it may not dis-
appoint them.

To the Editor of the Saturday Kev lew
my thanks are due for permission
to republish here those of the fol-
lowing tales which have appeared
in his columns, and, more than that,
for the opportunity afforded me by
his review of reaching a wider public
than my books have attained to yet.

CONTENTS

PAGE

POLTARNEES, BEHOLDER OF OCEAN . I

BLAGDAROSS 31

THE MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ . . 43

WHERE THE TIDES EBB AND FLOW . 53

BETHMOORA 66

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN ... 77
THE SWORD AND THE IDOL . . .122

THE IDLE CITY 137

THE HASHISH MAN 151

POOR OLD BILL 165

THE BEGGARS 179

CARCASSONNE 187

IN ZACCARATH 218

THE FIELD 226

THE DAY OF THE POLL . . . .235

THE UNHAPPY BODY 243

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ROMANCE COMES DOWN • OUT OF /

HILLY WOODLANDS. . . To face page 4

* • :" > .
WE WOULD GALLOP THROUGH ..

AFRICA . . ." ' - , , . . , . - ,, " 40

THE SOUL OF ANDELSPRUTZ . ,, 48

THE TERRIBLE'" MUD , . . ., ,} -54

BIRD OF THE RIVER ... . „ 76

THE GATE OF YANN, . * . •. „ 118

THE SILE:NCE OF GED .' . . v ,, 132

THUBA MLEEN •'. . . . ,, 160

LITTLE COTTAGES . .' . WHOSE LOOKS

WE DID NOT LIKE 1 66

A DREAMER'S TALES

POLTARNEES, BEHOLDER
OF OCEAN

TOLDEES, Mondath, Arizini, these are the
Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels
upon their borders do not behold the sea.
Beyond them to the east there lies a
desert, for ever untroubled by man : all
yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of
stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard
lying in the sun. To the south they are
bounded by magic, to the west by a moun-
tain, and to the north by the voice and
anger of the Polar wind. Like a great
wall is the mountain to the west. It
comes up out of the distance and goes

2 A DREAMER'S TALES

down into the distance again, and it is
named Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean.
To the northward red rocks, smooth and
bare of soil, and without any speck of
moss or herbage, slope up to the very
lips of the Polar wind, and there is nothing
else there but the noise of his anger.
Very peaceful are the Inner Lands, and
very fair are their cities, and there is no
war among them, but quiet and ease.
And they have no enemy but age, for
thirst and fever lie sunning themselves
out in the mid-desert, and never prowl
into the Inner Lands. And the ghouls
and ghosts, whose highway is the night,
are kept in the south by the boundary
of magic. And very small are all their
pleasant cities, and all men are known
to one another therein, and bless one
another by name as they meet in the
streets. And they have a broad, green

POLTARNEES 3

way in every city that comes in out of
some vale or wood or downland, and
wanders in and out about the city between
the houses and across the streets ; and
the people walk along it never at all, but
every year at her appointed time Spring
walks along it from the flowery lands,
causing the anemone to bloom on the
green way and all the early joys of hidden
woods, or deep, secluded vales, or triumph-
ant downlands, whose heads lift up so
proudly, far up aloof from cities.

Sometimes waggoners or shepherds walk
along this way, they that have come into
the city from over cloudy ridges, and the
townsmen hinder them not, for there is
a tread that troubleth the grass and a
tread that troubleth it not, and each man
in his own heart knoweth which tread
he hath. And in the sunlit spaces of the
weald and in the wold's dark places, afar

4 A DREAMER'S TALES

from the music of cities and from the
dance of the cities afar, they make there
the music of the country places and dance
the country dance. Amiable, near and
friendly appears to these men the sun,
and as he is genial to them and tends their
younger vines, so they are kind to the
little woodland things and any rumour
of the fairies or old legend. And when
the light of some little distant city makes
a slight flush upon the edge of the sky,
and the happy golden windows of the
homesteads stare gleaming into the dark,
then the old and holy figure of Romance,
cloaked even to the face, comes down
out of hilly woodlands and bids dark
shadows to rise up and dance, and sends
the forest creatures forth to prowl, and
lights in a moment in her bower of qrass

o o

the little glow-worm's lamp, and brings
a hush down over the grey lands, and

ROMANCE COMES D

T OF HTLLY WOODLANDS

POLTARNEES 5

out of it rises faintly on far-off hills the
voice of a lute. There are not in the
world lands more prosperous and happy
than Toldees, Mondath, Arizim.

From these three little kingdoms that
are named the Inner Lands the young men
stole constantly away. One by one they
went, and no one knew why they went
save that they had a longing to behold
the Sea. Of this longing they spoke little,
but a young man would become silent
for a few days, and then, one morning
very early, he would slip away and slowly
climb Poltarnees's difficult slope, and hav-
ing attained the top pass over and never
return. A few stayed behind in the Inner
Lands and became old men, but none that
had ever climbed Poltarnees from the very
earliest times had ever come back again.
Many had gone up Poltarnees sworn to
return. Once a king sent all his courtiers,

6 A DREAMER'S TALES

one by one, to report the mystery to him,
and then went himself; none ever returned.
Now, it was the wont of the folk of the
Inner Lands to worship rumours and
legends of the Sea, and all that their
prophets discovered of the Sea was writ
in a sacred book, and with deep devotion
on days of festival or mourning read in
the temples by the priests. Now, all
their temples lay open to the west, resting
upon pillars, that the breeze from the Sea
might enter them, and they lay open on
pillars to the east that the breezes of the
Sea might not be hindered but pass on-
ward wherever the Sea list. And this is
the legend that they had of the Sea, whom
none in the Inner Lands had ever beholden.
They say that the Sea is a river heading
towards Hercules, and they say that he
touches against the edge of the world, and
that Poltarnees looks upon him. They

POLTARNEES 7

say that all the worlds of heaven go
bobbing on this river and are swept down
with the stream, and that Infinity is thick
and furry with forests through which the
river in his course sweeps on with all the
worlds of heaven. Among the colossal
trunks of those dark trees, the smallest
fronds of whose branches are many nights,
there walk the gods. And whenever its
thirst, glowing in space like a great sun,
comes upon the beast, the tiger of the
gods creeps down to the river to drink.
And the tiger of the gods drinks his fill
loudly, whelming worlds the while, and the
level of the river sinks between its banks
ere the beast's thirst is quenched and ceases
to glow like a sun. And many worlds
thereby are heaped up dry and stranded,
and the gods walk not among them ever-
more, because they are hard to their feet.
These are the worlds that have no destiny,

8 A DREAMER'S TALES

whose people know no god. And the
river sweeps onwards ever. And the
name of the river is Oriathon, but men
call it Ocean. This is the Lower Faith
of the Inner Lands. And there is a
Higher Faith which is not told to all.
According to the Higher Faith of the
Inner Lands the river Oriathon sweeps
on through the forests of Infinity and all
at once falls roaring over an Edge, whence
Time has long ago recalled his hours to
fight in his war with the gods ; and falls
unlit by the flash of nights and days,
with his flood unmeasured by miles, into
the deeps of nothing.

Now as the centuries went by and the
one way by which a man could climb Pol-
tarnees became worn with feet, more and
more men surmounted it, not to return.
And still they knew not in the Inner
Lands upon what mystery Poltarnees

POLTARNEES 9

looked. For on a still day and windless,
while men walked happily about their
beautiful streets or tended flocks in
the country, suddenly the west wind
would bestir himself and come in from
the Sea. And he would come cloaked and
grey and mournful and carry to someone
the hungry cry of the Sea calling out for
bones of men. And he that heard it
would move restlessly for some hours,
and at last would rise suddenly, irresistibly
up, setting his face to Poltarnees, and
would say, as is the custom of those lands
when men part briefly, "Till a man's
heart remembereth," which means "Fare-
well for a while " ; but those that loved
him, seeing his eyes on Poltarnees, would
answer sadly, " Till the gods forget,"
which means " Farewell."

Now the King of Arizim had a daughter
who played with the wild wood flowers,

io A DREAMER'S TALES

and with the fountains in her father's
court, and with the little blue heaven-
birds that came to her doorway in the
winter to shelter from the snow. And
she was more beautiful than the wild
wood flowers, or than all the fountains in
her father's court, or than the blue heaven-
birds in their full winter plumage when
they shelter from the snow. The old
wise kings of Mondath and of Toldees
saw her once as she went lightly down
the little paths of her garden, and, turning
their gaze into the mists of thought,
pondered the destiny of their Inner
Lands. And they watched her closely
by the stately flowers, and standing alone
in the sunlight, and passing and repassing
the strutting purple birds that the king's
fowlers had brought from Asagehon.
When she was of the age of fifteen years
the King of Mondath called a council of

POLTARNEES n

kings. And there met with him the
kings of Toldees and Arizim. And the
King of Mondath in his Council said :

" The call of the unappeased and
hungry Sea (and at the word ' Sea ' the
three kings bowed their heads) lures
every year out of our happy kingdoms
more and more of our men, and still we
know not the mystery of the Sea, and no
devised oath has brought one man back.
Now thy daughter, Arizim, is lovelier
than the sunlight, and lovelier than those
stately flowers of thine that stand so tall
in her garden, and hath more grace and
beauty than those strange birds that
the venturous fowlers bring in creaking
waggons out of Asage"hon, whose feathers
are alternate purple and white. Now, he
that shall love thy daughter Hilnaric,
whoever he shall be, is the man to
climb Poltarnees and return, as none

12 A DREAMER'S TALES

hath ever before, and tell us upon what
Poltarnees looks ; for it may be that thy
daughter is more beautiful than the Sea."
Then from his Seat of Council arose
the King of Arizim. He said : "I fear
that thou hast spoken blasphemy against
the Sea, and I have a dread that ill will
come of it. Indeed I had not thought
she was so fair. It is such a short
while ago that she was quite a small
child with her hair still unkempt and not
yet attired in the manner of princesses,
and she would go up into the wild woods
unattended and come back with her robes
unseemly and all torn, and would not
take reproof with humble spirit, but made
grimaces even in my marble court all set
about with fountains."

Then said the King of Toldees :
" Let us watch more closely and let us
see the Princess Hilnaric in the season

POLTARNEES 13

of the orchard-bloom when the great birds
go by that know the Sea, to rest in our
inland places ; and if she be more beauti-
ful than the sunrise over our folded king-
doms when all the orchards bloom, it may
be that she is more beautiful than the Sea."
And the King of Arizim said :
" I fear this is terrible blasphemy, yet
will I do as you have decided in council."

And the season of the orchard-bloom
appeared. One night the King of Arizim
called his daughter forth on to his outer
balcony of marble. And the moon was
rising huge and round and holy over dark
woods, and all the fountains were singing
to the night. And the moon touched the
marble palace gables, and they glowed in
the land. And the moon touched the
heads of all the fountains, and the grey
columns broke into fairy lights. And the
moon left the dark ways of the forest and

i4 A DREAMER'S TALES

lit the whole white palace and its fountains
and shone on the forehead of the Princess,
and the palace of Arizim glowed afar, and
the fountains became columns of gleaming
jewels and song. And the moon made a
music at his rising, but it fell a little short
of mortal ears. And Hilnaric stood there
wondering, clad in white, with the moon-
light shining on her forehead ; and watch-
ing her from the shadows on the terrace
stood the kings of Mondath and Toldees.
They said :

" She is more beautiful than the moon-
rise."

And on another day the King of Arizim
bade his daughter forth at dawn, and they
stood again upon the balcony. And the
sun came up over a world of orchards, and
the sea-mists went back over Poltarnees
to the Sea ; little wild voices arose in all
the thickets, the voices of the fountains

POLTARNEES 15

began to die, and the song arose, in all
the marble temples, of the birds that are
sacred to the Sea. And Hilnaric stood
there, still glowing with dreams of heaven.

" She is more beautiful," said the kings,
" than morning."

Yet one more trial they made of Hil-
naric's beauty, for they watched her on
the terraces at sunset ere yet the petals
of the orchards had fallen, and all along
the edge of neighbouring woods the rhodo-
dendron was blooming with the azalea.
And the sun went down under craggy
Poltarnees, and the sea-mist poured over
his summit inland. And the marble
temples stood up clear in the evening,
but films of twilight were drawn be-
tween the mountain and the city. Then
from the Temple ledges and eaves of
palaces the bats fell headlong downwards,
then spread their wings and floated up

16 A DREAMER'S TALES

and down through darkening ways ; lights
came blinking out in golden windows,
men cloaked themselves against the grey
sea-mist, the sound of small songs arose,
and the face of Hilnaric became a resting-
place for mysteries and dreams.

" Than all these things," said the kings,
" she is more lovely : but who can say
whether she is lovelier than the Sea ? "

Prone in a rhododendron thicket at the
edge of the palace lawns a hunter had
waited since the sun went down. Near to
him was a deep pool where the hyacinths
grew and strange flowers floated upon it
with broad leaves, and there the great bull
gariachs came down to drink by starlight,
and, waiting there for the gariachs to
come, he saw the white form of the
Princess leaning on her balcony. Before
the stars shone out or the bulls came
down to drink he left his lurking-place

POLTARNEES 17

and moved closer to the palace to see
more nearly the Princess. The palace
lawns were full of untrodden dew, and
everything was still when he came across
them, holding his great spear. In the
farthest corner of the terraces the three
old kings were discussing the beauty of
Hilnaric and the destiny of the Inner
Lands. Moving lightly, with a hunter's
tread, the watcher by the pool came very
near, even in the still evening, before the
Princess saw him. When he saw her
closely he exclaimed suddenly :

" She must be more beautiful than the
Sea."

When the Princess turned and saw his
garb and his great spear she knew that
he was a hunter of gariachs.

When the three kings heard the young
man exclaim they said softly to one

another :

B

i8 A DREAMER'S TALES

" This must be the man."

Then they revealed themselves to him,
and spoke to him to try him. They
said :

" Sir, you have spoken blasphemy
against the Sea."

And the young man muttered :

" She is more beautiful than the Sea."

And the kings said :

" We are older than you and wiser, and
know that nothing is more beautiful than
the Sea."

And the young man took off the gear
of his head, and became downcast, and
knew that he spake with kings, yet he
answered :

" By this spear, she is more beautiful
than the Sea."

And all the while the Princess stared
at him, knowing him to be a hunter of
gariachs.

POLTARNEES 19

Then the King of Arizim said to the
watcher by the pool :

"If thou wilt go up Poltarnees and
come back, as none have come, and report
to us what lure or magic is in the Sea, we
will pardon thy blasphemy, and thou shalt
have the Princess to wife and sit among
the Council of the Kings."

And gladly thereunto the young man
consented. And the Princess spoke to
him, and asked him his name. And he
told her that his name was Athelvok,
and great joy arose in him at the sound
of her voice. And to the three kings he
promised to set out on the third day to
scale the slope of Poltarnees and to return
again, and this was the oath by which
they bound him to return :

" I swear by the Sea that bears the
worlds away, by the river of Oriathon,
which men call Ocean, and by the gods

20 A DREAMER'S TALES

and their tiger, and by the doom of the
worlds, that I will return again to the
Inner Lands, having beheld the Sea."

And that oath he swore with solemnity
that very night in one of the temples of
the Sea, but the three kings trusted more
to the beauty of Hilnaric even than to the
power of the oath.

The next day Athelvok came to the
palace of Arizim with the morning, over
the fields to the East and out of the
country of Toldees, and Hilnaric came
out along her balcony and met him on
the terraces. And she asked him if he
had ever slain a gariach, and he said
that he had slain three, and then he told
her how he had killed his first down by
the pool in the wood. For he had taken
his father's spear and gone down to the
edge of the pool, and had lain under the
azaleas there waiting for the stars to shine,

POLTARNEES 21

by whose first light the gariachs go to
the pools to drink ; and he had gone too
early and had had long to wait, and the
passing hours seemed longer than they
were. And all the birds came in that
home at night, and the bat was abroad,
and the hour of the duck went by, and
still no gariach came down to the pool ;
and Athelvok felt sure that none would
come. And just as this grew to a cer-
tainty in his mind the thicket parted noise-
lessly and a huge bull gariach stood facing
him on the edge of the water, and his
great horns swept out sideways from his
head, and at the ends curved upwards,
and were four strides in width from tip
to tip. And he had not seen Athelvok,
for the great bull was on the far side of
the little pool, and Athelvok could not
creep round to him for fear of meeting
the wind (for the gariachs, who can see

22 A DREAMER'S TALES

little in the dark forests, rely on hearing
and smell). But he devised swiftly in
his mind while the bull stood there with
head erect just twenty strides from him
across the water. And the bull sniffed
the wind cautiously and listened, then
lowered its great head down to the pool
and drank. At that instant Athelvok
leapt into the water and shot forward
through its weedy depths among the
stems of the strange flowers that floated
upon broad leaves on the surface. And
Athelvok kept his spear out straight be-
fore him, and the fingers of his left hand
he held rigid and straight, not pointing
upwards, and so did not come to the
surface, but was carried onward by the
strength of his spring and passed unen-
tangled through the stems of the flowers.
When Athelvok jumped into the water
the bull must have thrown his head up,

POLTARNEES 23

startled at the splash, then he would have
listened and have sniffed the air, and
neither hearing nor scenting any danger
he must have remained rigid for some
moments, for it was in that attitude that
Athelvok found him as he emerged breath-
less at his feet. And, striking at once,
Athelvok drove the spear into his throat
before the head and the terrible horns
came down. But Athelvok had clung
to one of the great horns, and had been
carried at terrible speed though the rhodo-
dendron bushes until the gariach fell,
but rose at once again, and died standing
up, still struggling, drowned in its own
blood.

But to Hilnaric listening it was as
though one of the heroes of old time
had come back again in the full glory
of his legendary youth.

And long time they went up and down

24 A DREAMER'S TALES

the terraces, saying those things which
were said before and since, and which lips
shall yet be made to say again. And
above them stood Poltarnees beholding
the Sea.

And the day came when Athelvok
should go. And Hilnaric said to him :

" Will you not indeed most surely come
back agai^n, having just looked over the
summit of Poltarnees ? "

Athelvok answered : "I will indeed
come back, for thy voice is more beauti-
ful than the hymn of the priests when
they chant and praise the Sea, and
though many tributary seas ran down
into Oriathon and he and all the others
poured their beauty into one pool below
me, yet would I return swearing that
thou wert fairer than they."

And Hilnaric answered :

" The wisdom of my heart tells me,

POLTARNEES 25

or old knowledge or prophecy, or some
strange lore, that I shall never hear thy
voice again. And for this I give thee my
forgiveness."

But he, repeating the oath that he had
sworn, set out, looking often backwards
until the slope became too steep and his
face was set to the rock. It was in the
morning that he started, and he climbed
all the day with little rest, where every
foothole was smooth with many feet.
Before he reached the top the sun dis-
appeared from him, and darker and darker
grew the Inner Lands. Then he pushed
on so as to see before dark whatever
thing Poltarnees had to show. The dusk
was deep over the Inner Lands, and the
lights of cities twinkled through the sea-
mist when he came to Poltarnees's summit,
and the sun before him was not yet gone
from the sky.

26 A DREAMER'S TALES

And there below him was the old
wrinkled Sea, smiling and murmuring
song. And he nursed little ships with
gleaming sails, and in his hands were old
regretted wrecks, and masts all studded
over with golden nails that he had rent
in anger out of beautiful galleons. And
the glory of the sun was among the surges
as they brought driftwood out of isles of
spice, tossing their golden heads. And
the grey currents crept away to the south
like companionless serpents that love
something afar with a restless, deadly
love. And the whole plain of water
glittering with late sunlight, and the
surges and the currents and the white
sails of ships were all together like the
face of a strange new god that has looked
a man for the first time in the eyes at the
moment of his death ; and Athelvok, look-
ing on the wonderful Sea, knew why it was

POLTARNEES 27

that the dead never return, for there is
something that the dead feel and know,
and the living would never understand
even though the dead should come and
speak to them about it. And there was
the Sea smiling at him, glad with the
glory of the sun. And there was a haven
there for homing ships, and a sunlit city
stood upon its marge, and people walked
about the streets of it clad in the un-
imagined merchandise of far sea-border-
ing lands.

An easy slope of loose crumbled rock
went from the top of Poltarnees to the
shore of the Sea.

For a long while Athelvok stood there
regretfully, knowing that there had come
something into his soul that no one in the
Inner Lands could understand, where the
thoughts of their minds had gone no
farther than the three little kingdoms.

28 A DREAMER'S TALES

Then, looking long upon the wandering
ships, and the marvellous merchandise
from alien lands, and the unknown colour
that wreathed the brows of the Sea, he
turned his face to the darkness and the
Inner Lands.

At that moment the Sea sang a dirge at
sunset for all the harm that he had done
in anger and all the ruin wrought on
adventurous ships ; and there were tears
in the voice of the tyrannous Sea, for he
had loved the galleons that he had over-
whelmed, and he called all men to him
and all living things that he might make
amends, because he had loved the bones
that he had strewn afar. And Athelvok
turned and set one foot upon the crumbled
slope, and then another, and walked a little
way to be nearer to the Sea, and then a
dream came upon him and he felt that
men had wronged the lovely Sea because

POLTARNEES 29

he had been angry a little, because he had
been sometimes cruel ; he felt that there
was trouble among the tides of the Sea
because he had loved the galleons who
were dead. Still he walked on and the
crumbled stones rolled with him, and just
as the twilight faded and a star appeared
he came to the golden shore, and walked
on till the surges were about his knees,
and he heard the prayer-like blessings of
the Sea. Long he stood thus, while the
stars came out above him and shone
again in the surges ; more stars came
wheeling in their courses up from the
Sea, lights twinkled out through all the
haven city, lanterns were slung from the
ships, the purple night burned on ; and
Earth, to the eyes of the gods as they sat
afar, glowed as with one flame. Then
Athelvok went into the haven city ; there
he met many who had left the Inner

30 A DREAMER'S TALES

Lands before him ; none of them wished
to return to the people who had not seen
the Sea ; many of them had forgotten the
three little kingdoms, and it was rumoured
that one man, who had once tried to
return, had found the shifting, crumbled
slope impossible to climb.

Hilnaric never married. But her dowry
was set aside to build a temple wherein
men curse the ocean.

Once every year, with solemn rite and
ceremony, they curse the tides of the Sea ;
and the moon looks in and hates them.

BLAGDAROSS

ON a waste place strewn with bricks in the
outskirts of a town twilight was falling.
A star or two appeared over the smoke,
and distant windows lit mysterious lights.
The stillness deepened and the loneliness.
Then all the outcast things that are silent
by day found voices.

An old cork spoke first. He said :
" I grew in Andalusian woods, but never
listened to the idle songs of Spain. I
only grew strong in the sunlight waiting
for my destiny. One day the merchants
came and took us all away and carried us
all along the shore of the sea, piled high
on the backs of donkeys, and in a town by
the sea they made me into the shape that

32 A DREAMER'S TALES

I am now. One day they sent me north-
ward to Provence, and there I fulfilled my
destiny. For they set me as a guard over
the bubbling wine, and I faithfully stood
sentinel for twenty years. For the first
few years in the bottle that I guarded the
wine slept, dreaming of Provence ; but as
the years went on he grew stronger and
stronger, until at last whenever a man
went by the wine would put out all his
might against me, saying : ' Let me go
free ; let me go free ! ' And every year
his strength increased, and he grew more
clamorous when men went by, but never
availed to hurl me from my post. But
when I had powerfully held him for twenty
years they brought him to the banquet
and took me from my post, and the wine
arose rejoicing and leapt through the veins
of men and exalted their souls within them
till they stood up in their places and sang

BLAGDAROSS 33

Provencal songs. But me they cast away
— me that had been sentinel for twenty
years, and was still as strong and staunch
as when first I went on guard. Now I
am an outcast in a cold northern city, who
once have known the Andalusian skies
and guarded long ago Provengal suns that
swam in the heart of the rejoicing wine."

An unstruck match that somebody had
dropped spoke next. " I am a child of
the sun," he said, "and an enemy of
cities ; there is more in my heart than you
know of. I am a brother of Etna and
Stromboli ; I have fires lurking in me that
will one day rise up beautiful and strong.
We will not go into servitude on any
hearth nor work machines for our food,
but we will take our own food where we
find it on that day when we are strong.
There are wonderful children in my heart
whose faces shall be more lovely than the

34 A DREAMER'S TALES

rainbow ; they shall make a compact with
the North wind, and he shall lead them
forth ; all shall be black behind them and
black above them, and there shall be noth-
ing beautiful in the world but them ; they
shall seize upon the earth and it shall be
theirs, and nothing shall stop them but
our old enemy the sea."

Then an old broken kettle spoke, and
said : "I am the friend of cities. I sit
among the slaves upon the hearth, the
little flames that have been fed with coal.
When the slaves dance behind the iron
bars I sit in the middle of the dance and
sing and make our masters glad. And
I make songs about the comfort of the
cat, and about the malice that is towards
her in the heart of the dog, and about the
crawling of the baby, and about the ease
that is in the lord of the house when we
brew the good brown tea ; and sometimes

BLAGDAROSS 35

when the house is very warm and slaves
and masters are glad, I rebuke the hostile
winds that prowl about the world."

And then there spoke the piece of an
old cord. "I was made in a place of
doom, and doomed men made my fibres,
working without hope. Therefore there
came a grimness into my heart, so that
I never let anything go free when once I
was set to bind it. Many a thing have
I bound relentlessly for months and for
years ; for I used to come coiling into
warehouses where the great boxes lay all
open to the air, and one of them would
be suddenly closed up, and my fearful
strength would be set on him like a curse,
and if his timbers groaned when first I
seized them, or if they creaked aloud in
the lonely night, thinking of woodlands
out of which they came, then I only
gripped them tighter still, for the poor

36 A DREAMER'S TALES

useless hate is in my soul of those that
made me in the place of doom. Yet, for
all the things that my prison-clutch has
held, the last work that I did was to
set something free. I lay idle one night
in the gloom on the warehouse floor.
Nothing stirred there, and even the
spider slept. Towards midnight a great
flock of echoes suddenly leapt up from
the wooden planks and circled round the
roof. A man was coming towards me
all alone. And as he came his soul was
reproaching him, and I saw that there
was a great trouble between the man
and his soul, for his soul would not let
him be, but went on reproaching him.

" Then the man saw me and said,
'This at least will not fail me.' When
I heard him say this about me, I deter-
mined that whatever he might require of
me it should be done to the uttermost.

BLAGDAROSS 37

And as I made this determination in my
unaltering heart, he picked me up and
stood on an empty box that I should
have bound on the morrow, and tied one
end of me to a dark rafter ; and the knot
was carelessly tied, because his soul was
reproaching him all the while continually
and giving him no ease. Then he made
the other end of me into a noose, but
when the man's soul saw this it stopped
reproaching the man, and cried out to
him hurriedly, and besought him to be at
peace with it and to do nothing sudden ;
but the man went on with his work, and
put the noose down over his face and
underneath his chin, and the soul screamed
horribly.

" Then the man kicked the box away
with his foot, and the moment he did this
I knew that my strength was not great
enough to hold him ; but I remembered

38 A DREAMER'S TALES

that he had said I would not fail him,
and I put all my grim vigour into my
fibres and held him by sheer will. Then
the soul shouted to me to give way, but
I said :

" ' No ; you vexed the man.'

" Then it screamed to me to leave go
of the rafter, and already I was slipping,
for I only held on to it by a careless knot,
but I gripped with my prison grip and said :

" ' You vexed the man.'

"And very swiftly it said other things
to me, but I answered not ; and at last
the soul that vexed the man that had
trusted me flew away and left him at
peace. I was never able to bind things
any more, for every one of my fibres was
worn and wrenched, and even my relent-
less heart was weakened by the struggle.
Very soon afterwards I was thrown out
here. I have done my work."

BLAGDAROSS 39

So they spoke among themselves, but
all the while there loomed above them the
form of an old rocking-horse complaining
bitterly. He said : "I am Blagdaross.
Woe is me that I should lie now an out-
cast among these worthy but little people.
Alas ! for the days that are gathered, and
alas for the Great One that was a master
and a soul to me, whose spirit is now
shrunken and can never know me again,
and no more ride abroad on knightly
quests. I was Bucephalus when he was
Alexander, and carried him victorious as
far as Ind. I encountered dragons with
him when he was St. George, I was the
horse of Roland fighting for Christendom,
and was often Rosinante. I fought in
tournays and went errant upon quests,
and met Ulysses and the heroes and the
fairies. Or late in the evening, just before
the lamps in the nursery were put out, he

40 A DREAMER'S TALES

would suddenly mount me, and we would
gallop through Africa. There we would
pass by night through tropic forests, and
come upon dark rivers sweeping by, all
gleaming with the eyes of crocodiles,
where the hippopotamus floated down
with the stream, and mysterious craft
loomed suddenly out of the dark and
furtively passed away. And when we
had passed through the forest lit by the
fireflies we would come to the open plains,
and gallop onwards with scarlet flamin-
goes flying along beside us through the
lands of dusky kings, with golden crowns
upon their heads and sceptres in their
hands, who came running out of their
palaces to see us pass. Then I would
wheel suddenly, and the dust flew up from
my four hoofs as I turned and we gal-
loped home again, and my master was
put to bed. And again he would ride

WE WOULD GALLOP THROUGH AFRICA

BLAGDAROSS 41

abroad on another day till we came to
magical fortresses guarded by wizardry
and overthrew the dragons at the gate,
and ever came back with a princess fairer
than the sea.

" But my master began to grow larger
in his body and smaller in his soul, and
then he rode more seldom upon quests.
At last he saw gold and never came
again, and I was cast out here among
these little people."

But while the rocking-horse was speak-
ing two boys stole away, unnoticed by
their parents, from a house on the edge
of the waste place, and were coming
across it looking for adventures. One of
them carried a broom, and when he saw
the rocking-horse he said nothing, but
broke off the handle from the broom and
thrust it between his braces and his shirt
on the left side. Then he mounted the

42 A DREAMER'S TALES

rocking-horse, and drawing forth the
broomstick, which was sharp and spiky
at the end, said, "Saladin is in this desert
with all his paynims, and I am Cceur de
Lion." After a while the other boy said :
"Now let me kill Saladin too." But
Blagdaross in his wooden heart, that
exulted with thoughts of battle, said : " I
am Blagdaross yet ! "

THE MADNESS OF ANDEL-
SPRUTZ

I FIRST saw the city of Andelsprutz on
an afternoon in spring. The day was
full of sunshine as I came by the way
of the fields, and all that morning I had
said, " There will be sunlight on it when
I see for the first time the beautiful con-
quered city whose fame has so often made
for me lovely dreams." Suddenly I saw
its fortifications lifting out of the fields,
and behind them stood its belfries. I
went in by a gate and saw its houses and
streets, and a great disappointment came
upon me. For there is an air about a
city, and it has a way with it, whereby
a man may recognise one from another

43

44 A DREAMER'S TALES

at once. There are cities full of happi-
ness, and cities full of pleasure, and cities
full of gloom. There are cities with
their faces to heaven, and some with their
faces to earth ; some have a way of look-
ing at the past, and others look at the
future ; some notice you if you come
among them, others glance at you, others
let you go by. Some love the cities that
are their neighbours, others are dear to
the plains and to the heath ; some cities
are bare to the wind, others have purple
cloaks and others brown cloaks, and some
are clad in white. Some tell the old tale
of their infancy, with others it is secret ;
some cities sing and some mutter, some
are angry, and some have broken hearts,
and each city has her way of greeting
Time.

I had said : " I will see Andelsprutz
arrogant with her beauty," and I had

MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ 45

said : " I will see her weeping over her
conquest."

I had said : " She will sing songs to
me," and " she will be reticent," " she will
be all robed," and " she will be bare but
splendid."

But the windows of Andelsprutz in
her houses looked vacantly over the plains
like the eyes of a dead madman. At the
hour her chimes sounded unlovely and
discordant, some of them were out of
tune, and the bells of some were cracked,
her roofs were bald and without moss.
At evening no pleasant rumour arose in
her streets. When the lamps were lit
in the houses no mystical flood of light
stole out into the dusk, you merely saw
that there were lighted lamps ; Andel-
sprutz had no way with her and no
air about her. When the night fell and
the blinds were all drawn down, then I

46 A DREAMER'S TALES

perceived what I had not thought in the
daylight. I knew then that Andelsprutz
was dead.

I saw a fair-haired man who drank beer
in a cafe, and I said to him :

"Why is the city of Andelsprutz quite
dead, and her soul gone hence ? "

He answered : " Cities do not have
souls, and there is never any life in
bricks."

And I said to him : " Sir, you have
spoken truly."

And I asked the same question of
another man, and he gave me the same
answer, and I thanked him for his
courtesy. And I saw a man of a more
slender build, who had black hair, and
channels in his cheeks for tears to run in,
and I said to him :

" Why is Andelsprutz quite dead, and
when did her soul go hence ? "

MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ 47

And he answered : " Andelsprutz hoped
too much. For thirty years would she
stretch out her arms toward the land of
Akla every night, to Mother Akla from
whom she had been stolen. Every night
she would be hoping and sighing, and
stretching out her arms to Mother Akla.
At midnight, once a year, on the anni-
versary of the terrible day, Akla would
send spies to lay a wreath against the
walls of Andelsprutz. She could do no
more. And on this night, once in every
year, I used to weep, for weeping was
the mood of the city that nursed me.
Every night while other cities slept did
Andelsprutz sit brooding here and hoping,
till thirty wreaths lay mouldering by her
walls, and still the armies of Akla could
not come.

" But after she had hoped so long, and
on the night that faithful spies had

48 A DREAMER'S TALES

brought the thirtieth wreath, Andelsprutz
went suddenly mad. All the bells
clanged hideously in the belfries, horses
bolted in the streets, the dogs all howled,
the stolid conquerors awoke and turned
in their beds and slept again ; and I saw
the grey shadowy form of Andelsprutz
rise up, decking her hair with the phan-
tasms of cathedrals, and stride away from
her city. And the great shadowy form
that was the soul of Andelsprutz went
away muttering to the mountains, and
there I followed her — for had she not
been my nurse ? Yes, I went away alone
into the mountains, and for three days,
wrapped in a cloak, I slept in their misty
solitudes. I had no food to eat, and to
drink I had only the water of the moun-
tain streams. By day no living thing was
near to me, and I heard nothing but the
noise of the wind, and the mountain

THE SOUL OF ANDEI.SPRUTZ

MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ 49

streams roaring. But for three nights I
heard all round me on the mountain the
sounds of a great city : I saw the lights
of tall cathedral windows flash momently
on the peaks, and at times the glimmering
lantern of some fortress patrol. And I
saw the huge misty outline of the soul
of Andelsprutz sitting decked with her
ghostly cathedrals, speaking to herself,
with her eyes fixed before her in a mad
stare, telling of ancient wars. And her
confused speech for all those nights upon
the mountain was sometimes the voice
of traffic, and then of church bells, and
then of the bugles, but oftenest it was
the voice of red war ; and it was all
incoherent, and she was quite mad.

" The third night it rained heavily all
night long, but I stayed up there to
watch the soul of my native city. And
she still sat staring straight before her,

D

50 A DREAMER'S TALES

raving ; but her voice was gentler now,
there were more chimes in it, and oc-
casional song. Midnight passed, and the
rain still swept down on me, and still the
solitudes of the mountain were full of the
mutterings of the poor mad city. And
the hours after midnight came, the cold
hours wherein sick men die.

" Suddenly I was aware of great shapes
moving in the rain, and heard the sound
of voices that were not of my city nor
yet of any that I ever knew. And
presently I discerned, though faintly, the
souls of a great concourse of cities, all
bending over Andelsprutz and comforting
her, and the ravines of the mountains
roared that night with the voices of cities
that had lain still for centuries. For
there came the soul of Camelot that had
so long ago forsaken Usk ; and there was
I lion, all girt with towers, still cursing

MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ 51

the sweet face of ruinous Helen ; I saw
there Babylon and Persepolis, and the
bearded face of bull-like Nineveh, and
Athens mourning her immortal gods.

" All these souls of cities that were
dead spoke that night on the mountain
to my city and soothed her, until at last
she muttered of war no longer, and her
eyes stared wildly no more, but she hid
her face in her hands and for some while
wept softly. At last she arose, and,
walking slowly and with bended head,
and leaning upon I lion and Carthage,
went mournfully eastwards ; and the
dust of her highways swirled behind her
as she went, a ghostly dust that never
turned to mud in all that drenching rain.
And so the souls of the cities led her
away, and gradually they disappeared
from the mountain, and the ancient voices
died away in the distance.

52 A DREAMER'S TALES

" Never since then have I seen my city
alive ; but once I met with a traveller
who said that somewhere in the midst
of a great desert are gathered together
the souls of all dead cities. He said that
he was lost once in a place where there
was no water, and he heard their voices
speaking all the night."

But I said : " I was once without water
in a desert and heard a city speaking to
me, but knew not whether it really spoke
or not, for on that day I heard so many
terrible things, and only some of them
were true."

And the man with the black hair said :
" I believe it to be true, though whither
she went I know not. I only know that
a shepherd found me in the morning faint
with hunger and cold, and carried me down
here ; and when I came to Andelsprutz it
was, as you have perceived it, dead."

WHERE THE TIDES EBB
AND FLOW

I DREAMT that I had done a horrible thing,
so that burial was to be denied me either
in soil or sea, neither could there be any
hell for me.

I waited for some hours, knowing this.
Then my friends came for me, and slew
me secretly and with ancient rite, and lit
great tapers, and carried me away.

It was all in London that the thing was
done, and they went furtively at dead of
night along grey streets and among mean
houses until they came to the river. And
the river and the tide of the sea were
grappling with one another between the
mud-banks, and both of them were black
and full of lights. A sudden wonder came

53

54 WHERE THE TIDES

into the eyes of each, as my friends came
near to them with their glaring tapers.
All these things I saw as they carried me
dead and stiffening, for my soul was still
among my bones, because there was no
hell for it, and because Christian burial
was denied me.

They took me down a stairway that
was green with slimy things, and so came
slowly to the terrible mud. There, in the
territory of forsaken things, they dug a
shallow grave. When they had finished
they laid me in the grave, and suddenly
they cast their tapers to the river. And
when the water had quenched the flaring
lights the tapers looked pale and small
as they bobbed upon the tide, and at once
the glamour of the calamity was gone,
and I noticed then the approach of the
huge dawn ; and my friends cast their
cloaks over their faces, and the solemn

THE TERRIBLE MUD

EBB AND FLOW 55

procession was turned into many fugitives
that furtively stole away.

Then the mud came back wearily and
covered all but my face. There I lay
alone with quite forgotten things, with
drifting things that the tides will take no
farther, with useless things and lost things,
and with the horrible unnatural bricks
that are neither stone nor soil. I was
rid of feeling, because I had been killed,
but perception and thought were in my
unhappy soul. The dawn widened, and
I saw the desolate houses that crowded
the marge of the river, and their dead
windows peered into my dead eyes, win-
dows with bales behind them instead of
human souls. I grew so weary looking
at these forlorn things that I wanted to
cry out, but could not, because I was dead.
Then I knew, as I had never known
before, that for all the years that herd of

56 WHERE THE TIDES

desolate houses had wanted to cry out
too, but, being dead, were dumb. And I
knew then that it had yet been well with
the forgotten drifting things if they had
wept, but they were eyeless and without
life; And I, too, tried to weep, but there
were no tears in my dead eyes. And I
knew then that the river might have
cared for us, might have caressed us,
might have sung to us, but he swept
broadly onwards, thinking of nothing but
the princely ships.

At last the tide did what the river
would not, and came and covered me
over, and my soul had rest in the green
water, and rejoiced and believed that it
had the Burial of the Sea. But with
the ebb the water fell again, and left me
alone again with the callous mud among
the forgotten things that drift no more,
and with the sight of all those desolate

EBB AND FLOW 57

houses, and with the knowledge among
all of us that each was dead.

In the mournful wall behind me, hung
with green weeds, forsaken of the sea,
dark tunnels appeared, and secret narrow
passages that were clamped and barred.
From these at last the stealthy rats came
down to nibble me away, and my soul re-
joiced thereat and believed that he would be
free perforce from the accursed bones to
which burial was refused. Very soon the
rats ran away a little space and whispered
among themselves. They never came any
more. When I found that I was accursed
even among the rats I tried to weep again.

Then the tide came swinging back and
covered the dreadful mud, and hid the
desolate houses, and soothed the for-
gotten things, and my soul had ease for
a while in the sepulture of the sea. And
then the tide forsook me again.

58 WHERE THE TIDES

To and fro it came about me for many
years. Then the County Council found
me, and gave me decent burial. It was
the first grave that I had ever slept in.
That very night my friends came for me.
They dug me up and put me back again
in the shallow hole in the mud.

Again and again through the years my
bones found burial, but always behind the
funeral lurked one of those terrible men
who, as soon as night fell, came and dug
them up and carried them back again to
the hole in the mud.

And then one day the last of those men
died who once had done to me this ter-
rible thing. I heard his soul go over the
river at sunset.

And again I hoped.

A few weeks afterwards I was found
once more, and once more taken out of
that restless place and given deep burial

EBB AND FLOW 59

in sacred ground, where my soul hoped
that it should rest.

Almost at once men came with cloaks
and tapers to give me back to the mud,
for the thing had become a tradition and
a rite. And all the forsaken things
mocked me in their dumb hearts when
they saw me carried back, for they were
jealous of me because I had left the mud.
It must be remembered that I could not
weep.

And the years went by seawards where
the black barges go, and the great derelict
centuries became lost at sea, and still I
lay there without any cause to hope, and
daring not to hope without a cause, be-
cause of the terrible envy and the anger
of the things that could drift no more.

Once a great storm rode up, even as far
as London, out of the sea from the South ;
and he came curving into the river with

60 WHERE THE TIDES

the fierce East wind. And he was
mightier than the dreary tides, and went
with great leaps over the listless mud.
And all the sad forgotten things re-
joiced, and mingled with things that
were haughtier than they, and rode once
more amongst the lordly shipping that
was driven up and down. And out of
their hideous home he took my bones,
never again, I hoped, to be vexed with
the ebb and flow. And with the fall of
the tide he went riding down the river
and turned to the southwards, and so
went to his home. And my bones he
scattered among many isles and along
the shores of happy alien mainlands.
And for a moment, while they were far
asunder, my soul was almost free.

Then there arose, at the will of the
moon, the assiduous flow of the tide,
and it undid at once the work of the

EBB AND FLOW 61

ebb, and gathered my bones from the
marge of sunny isles, and gleaned them
all along the mainland's shores, and went
rocking northwards till it came to the
mouth of the Thames, and there turned
westwards its relentless face, and so went
up the river and came to the hole in
the mud, and into it dropped my bones ;
and partly the mud covered them and
partly it left them white, for the mud
cares not for its forsaken things.

Then the ebb came, and I saw the dead
eyes of the houses and the jealousy of
the other forgotten things that the storm
had not carried thence.

And some more centuries passed over
the ebb and flow and over the loneliness
of things forgotten. And I lay there all
the while in the careless grip of the mud,
never wholly covered, yet never able to
go free, and I longed for the great caress

62 WHERE THE TIDES

of the warm Earth or the comfortable lap
of the Sea.

Sometimes men found my bones and
buried them, but the tradition never died,
and my friends' successors always brought
them back. At last the barges went no
more, and there were fewer lights ; shaped
timbers no longer floated down the fair-
way, and there came instead old wind-
uprooted trees in all their natural simplicity.

At last I was aware that somewhere
near me a blade of grass was growing,
and the moss began to appear all over
the dead houses. One day some thistle-
down went drifting over the river.

For some years I watched these signs
attentively, until I became certain that
London was passing away. Then I
hoped once more, and all along both
banks of the river there was anger
among the lost things that anything

EBB AND FLOW 63

should dare to hope upon the forsaken
mud. Gradually the horrible houses
crumbled, until the poor dead things that
never had had life got decent burial
among the weeds and moss. At last
the may appeared and the convolvulus.
Finally, the wild rose stood up over
mounds that had been wharves and ware-
houses. Then I knew that the cause
of Nature had triumphed, and London
had passed away.

The last man in London came to the
wall by the river, in an ancient cloak that
was one of those that once my friends
had worn, and peered over the edge to
see that I still was there. Then he went,
and I never saw men again : they had
passed away with London.

A few days after the last man had
gone the birds came into London, all the
birds that sing. When they first saw

64 WHERE THE TIDES

me they all looked sideways at me, then
they went away a little and spoke among
themselves.

" He only sinned against Man," they
said ; "it is not our quarrel."

" Let us be kind to him," they said.

Then they hopped nearer me and
began to sing. It was the time of the
rising of the dawn, and from both banks
of the river, and from the sky, and from
the thickets that were once the streets,
hundreds of birds were singing. As the
light increased the birds sang more and
more ; they grew thicker and thicker in
the air above my head, till there were
thousands of them singing there, and then
millions, and at last I could see nothing
but a host of flickering wings with the
sunlight on them, and little gaps of sky.
Then when there was nothing to be heard
in London but the myriad notes of that

EBB AND FLOW 65

exultant song, my soul rose up from the
bones in the hole in the mud and began
to climb up the song heavenwards. And
it seemed that a laneway opened amongst
the wings of the birds, and it went up and
up, and one of the smaller gates of Para-
dise stood ajar at the end of it. And then
I knew by a sign that the mud should
receive me no more, for suddenly I found
that I could weep.

At this moment I opened my eyes in
bed in a house in London, and outside
some sparrows were twittering in a tree
in the light of the radiant morning ; and
there were tears still wet upon my face,
for one's restraint is feeble while one
sleeps. But I arose and opened the win-
dow wide, and, stretching my hands out
over the little garden, I blessed the birds
whose song had woken me up from the

troubled and terrible centuries of my dream.

E

BETHMOORA

THERE is a faint freshness in the London
night as though some strayed reveller of
a breeze had left his comrades in the
Kentish uplands and had entered the
town by stealth. The pavements are a
little damp and shiny. Upon one's ears
that at this late hour have become very
acute there hits the tap of a remote foot-
fall. Louder and louder grow the taps,
filling the whole night. And a black
cloaked figure passes by, and goes tapping
into the dark. One who has danced goes
homewards. Somewhere a ball has closed
its doors and ended. Its yellow lights are
out, its musicians are silent, its dancers
have all gone into the night air, and

BETHMOORA 67

Time has said of it, " Let it be past and
over, and among the things that I have
put away."

Shadows begin to detach themselves
from their great gathering places. No
less silently than those shadows that are
thin and dead move homewards the
stealthy cats. Thus have we even in
London our faint forebodings of the
dawn's approach, which the birds and
the beasts and the stars are crying aloud
to the untrammelled fields.

At what moment I know not I per-
ceive that the night itself is irrecoverably
overthrown. It is suddenly revealed to
me by the weary pallor of the street lamps
that the streets are silent and nocturnal
still, not because there is any strength in
night, but because men have not yet arisen
from sleep to defy him. So have I seen
dejected and untidy guards still bearing

68 A DREAMER'S TALES

antique muskets in palatial gateways,
although the realms of the monarch that
they guard have shrunk to a single pro-
vince which no enemy yet has troubled
to over-run.

And it is now manifest from the aspect
of the street lamps, those abashed de-
pendants of night, that already English
mountain peaks have seen the dawn, that
the cliffs of Dover are standing white to
the morning, that the sea-mist has lifted
and is pouring inland.

And now men with a hose have come
and are sluicing out the streets.

Behold now night is dead.

What memories, what fancies throng
one's mind ! A night but just now
gathered out of London by the hostile
hand of Time. A million common artificial
things all cloaked for a while in mystery,
like beggars robed in purple, and seated on

BETHMOORA 69

dread thrones. Four million people asleep,
dreaming perhaps. What worlds have
they gone into ? Whom have they met ?
But my thoughts are far off with Beth-
moora in her loneliness, whose gates swing
to and fro. To and fro they swing, and
creak and creak in the wind, but no one
hears them. They are of green copper,
very lovely, but no one sees them now.
The desert wind pours sand into their
hinges, no watchman comes to ease them.
No guard goes round Bethmoora's battle-
ments, no enemy assails them. There are
no lights in her houses, no footfall in her
streets ; she stands there dead and lonely
beyond the Hills of Hap, and I would
see Bethmoora once again, but dare
not.

It is many a year, as they tell me, since
Bethmoora became desolate.

Her desolation is spoken of in taverns

70 A DREAMER'S TALES

where sailors meet, and certain travellers
have told me of it.

I had hoped to see Bethmoora once
again. It is many a year ago, they say,
when the vintage was last gathered in
from the vineyards that I knew, where
it is all desert now. It was a radiant day,
and the people of the city were dancing
by the vineyards, while here and there
one played upon the kalipac. The purple
flowering shrubs were all in bloom,
and the snow shone upon the Hills of
Hap.

Outside the copper gates they crushed
the grapes in vats to make the syrabub.
It had been a goodly vintage.

In little gardens at the desert's edge
men beat the tambang and the tittibuk,
and blew melodiously the zootibar.

All there was mirth and song and dance,
because the vintage had been gathered in,

BETHMOORA 71

and there would be ample syrabub for the
winter months, and much left over to ex-
change for turquoises and emeralds with
the merchants who come down from Oxu-
hahn. Thus they rejoiced all day over
their vintage on the narrow strip of culti-
vated ground that lay between Bethmoora
and the desert which meets the sky to the
South. And when the heat of the day
began to abate, and the sun drew near to
the snows on the Hills of Hap, the note
of the zootibar still rose clear from the
gardens, and the brilliant dresses of the
dancers still wound among the flowers.
All that day three men on mules had
been noticed crossing the face of the Hills
of Hap. Backwards and forwards they
moved as the track wound lower and
lower, three little specks of black against
the snow. They were seen first in the
very early morning up near the shoulder

72 A DREAMER'S TALES

of Peol Jagganoth, and seemed to be
coming out of Utnar Ve"hi. All day they
came. And in the evening, just before
lights come out and colours change, they
appeared before Bethmoora's copper gates.
They carried staves, such as messengers
bear in those lands, and seemed sombrely
clad when the dancers all came round
them with their green and lilac dresses.
Those Europeans who were present and
heard the message given were ignorant of
the language, and only caught the name of
Utnar Ve"hi. But it was brief, and passed
rapidly from mouth to mouth, and almost
at once the people burnt their vineyards
and began to flee away from Bethmoora,
going for the most part northwards,
though some went to the East. They
ran down out of their fair white houses,
and streamed through the copper gate ;
the throbbing of the tambang and the

BETHMOORA 73

tittibuk suddenly ceased with the note
of the zootibar, and the clinking kalipac
stopped a moment after. The three
strange travellers went back the way
they came the instant their message was
given. It was the hour when a light
would have appeared in some high tower,
and window after window would have
poured into the dusk its lion-frightening
light, and the copper gates would have
been fastened up. But no lights came out
in windows there that night and have not
ever since, and those copper gates were
left wide and have never shut, and the
sound arose of the red tire crackling in
the vineyards, and the pattering of feet
fleeing softly. There were no cries, no
other sounds at all, only the rapid and
determined flight. They fled as swiftly
and quietly as a herd of wild cattle flee
when they suddenly see a man. It was

74 A DREAMER'S TALES

as though something had befallen which
had been feared for generations, which
could only be escaped by instant flight,
which left no time for indecision.

Then fear took the Europeans also, and
they too fled. And what the message
was I have never heard.

Many believe that it was a message
from Thuba Mleen, the mysterious em-
peror of those lands, who is never seen by
man, advising that Bethmoora should be
left desolate. Others say that the message
was one of warning from the gods, whether
from friendly gods or from adverse ones
they know not.

And others hold that the Plague was
ravaging a line of cities over in Utnar
Ve"hi, following the South - west wind
which for many weeks had been blowing
across them towards Bethmoora.

Some say that the terrible gnousar

BETHMOORA 75

sickness was upon the three travellers, and
that their very mules were dripping with
it, and suppose that they were driven to
the city by hunger, but suggest no better
reason for so terrible a crime.

But most believe that it was a message
from the desert himself, who owns all the
Earth to the southwards, spoken with his
peculiar cry to those three who knew his
voice — men who had been out on the
sand-wastes without tents by night, who
had been by day without water, men who
had been out there where the desert
mutters, and had grown to know his needs
and his malevolence. They say that the
desert had a need for Bethmoora, that he
wished to come into her lovely streets, and
to send into her temples and her houses
his storm-winds draped with sand. For
he hates the sound and the sight of men
in his old evil heart, and he would have

76 A DREAMER'S TALES

Bethmoora silent and undisturbed, save
for the weird love he whispers at her
gates.

If I knew what that message was that
the three men brought on mules, and told
in the copper gate, I think that I should
go and see Bethmoora once again. For
a great longing comes on me here in
London to see once more that white and
beautiful city ; and yet I dare not, for I
know not the danger I should have to
face, whether I should risk the fury of
unknown dreadful gods, or some disease
unspeakable and slow, or the desert's curse,
or torture in some little private room of
the Emperor Thuba Mleen, or something
that the travellers have not told — perhaps
more fearful still.

BIRD OF THE RIVER

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN

So I came down through the wood to
the bank of Yann and found, as had been
prophesied, the ship Bird of the River
about to loose her cable.

The captain sate cross-legged upon the
white deck with his scimitar lying beside
him in its jewelled scabbard, and the sailors
toiled to spread the nimble sails to bring
the ship into the central stream of Yann,
and all the while sang ancient soothing
songs. And the wind of the evening
descending cool from the snowfields of
some mountainous abode of distant gods
came suddenly, like glad tidings to an
anxious city, into the wing-like sails.

And so we came into the central stream,

78 A DREAMER'S TALES

whereat the sailors lowered the greater
sails. But I had gone to bow before the
captain, and to inquire concerning the
miracles, and appearances among men, of
the most holy gods of whatever land
he had come from. And the captain
answered that he came from fair Belzoond,
and worshipped gods that were the least
and humblest, who seldom sent the famine
or the thunder, and were easily appeased
with little battles. And I told how I
came from Ireland, which is of Europe,
whereat the captain and all the sailors
laughed, for they said, " There are no
such places in all the land of dreams."
When they had ceased to mock me, I
explained that my fancy mostly dwelt in
the desert of Cuppar-Nombo, about a
beautiful blue city called Golthoth the
Damned, which was sentinelled all round
by wolves and their shadows, and had

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 79

been utterly desolate for years and years,
because of a curse which the gods once
spoke in anger and could never since
recall. And sometimes my dreams took
me as far as Pungar Vees, the red walled
city where the fountains are, which trades
with the Isles and Thul. When I said
this they complimented me upon the abode
of my fancy, saying that, though they
had never seen these cities, such places
might well be imagined. For the rest
of that evening I bargained with the
captain over the sum that I should pay
him for my fare if God and the tide of
Yann should bring us safely as far as the
cliffs by the sea, which are named Bar-
Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann.

And now the sun had set, and all the
colours of the world and heaven had held
a festival with him, and slipped one by one
away before the imminent approach of

8o A DREAMER'S TALES

night. The parrots had all flown home
to the jungle on either bank, the monkeys
in rows in safety on high branches of the
trees were silent and asleep, the fireflies
in the deeps of the forest were going
up and down, and the great stars came
gleaming out to look on the face of Yann.
Then the sailors lighted lanterns and
hung them round the ship, and the light
flashed out on a sudden and dazzled Yann,
and the ducks that fed along his marshy
banks all suddenly arose, and made wide
circles in the upper air, and saw the distant
reaches of the Yann and the white mist
that softly cloaked the jungle, before they
returned again into their marshes.

And then the sailors knelt on the decks
and prayed, not all together, but five or six
at a time. Side by side there kneeled
down together five or six, for there only
prayed at the same time men of different

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 81

faiths, so that no god should hear two
men praying to him at once. As soon
as any one had finished his prayer, another
of the same faith would take his place.
Thus knelt the row of five or six with
bended heads under the fluttering sail,
while the central stream of the River Yann
took them on towards the sea, and their
prayers rose up from among the lanterns
and went towards the stars. And behind
them in the after end of the ship the helms-
man prayed aloud the helmsman's prayer,
which is prayed by all who follow his
trade upon the River Yann, of whatever
faith they be. And the captain prayed
to his little lesser gods, to the gods that
bless Belzoond.

And I too felt that I would pray. Yet
I liked not to pray to a jealous God there
where the frail affectionate gods whom the
heathen love were being humbly invoked ;

82 A DREAMER'S TALES

so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol
Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle
have long since deserted, who is now
unworshipped and alone ; and to him I
prayed.

And upon us praying the night came
suddenly down, as it comes upon all men
who pray at evening and upon all men
who do not ; yet our prayers comforted
our own souls when we thought of the
Great Night to come.

And so Yann bore us magnificently on-
wards, for he was elate with molten snow
that the Poltiades had brought him from
the Hills of Hap, and the Marn and
Migris were swollen full with floods ; and
he bore us in his might past Kyph and
Pir, and we saw the lights of Goolunza.

Soon we all slept except the helmsman,
who kept the ship in the mid-stream of
Yann.

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 83

When the sun rose the helmsman
ceased to sing, for by song he cheered
himself in the lonely night. When the
song ceased we suddenly all awoke, and
another took the helm, and the helms-
man slept.

We knew that soon we should come
to Mandaroon. We made a meal, and
Mandaroon appeared. Then the captain
commanded, and the sailors loosed again
the greater sails, and the ship turned and
left the stream of Yann and came into a
harbour beneath the ruddy walls of Man-
daroon. Then while the sailors went and
gathered fruits I came alone to the gate
of Mandaroon. A few huts were outside
it, .in which lived the guard. A sentinel
with a long white beard was standing in the
gate, armed with a rusty pike. He wore
large spectacles, which were covered with
dust. Through the gate I saw the city. A

84 A DREAMER'S TALES

deathly stillness was over all of it. The
ways seemed untrodden, and moss was
thick on doorsteps ; in the market-place
huddled figures lay asleep. A scent of
incense came wafted through the gateway,
of incense and burned poppies, and there
was a hum of the echoes of distant bells.
I said to the sentinel in the tongue of the
region of Yann, "Why are they all asleep
in this still city ? "

He answered : " None may ask ques-
tions in this gate for fear they wake the
people of the city. For when the people
of this city wake the gods will die. And
when the gods die men may dream no
more." And I began to ask him what
gods that city worshipped, but he lifted
his pike because none might ask questions
there. So I left him and went back to
the Bird of the River.

Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 85

her white pinnacles peering over her
ruddy walls and the green of her copper
roofs.

When I came back again to the Bird
of the River, I found the sailors
were returned to the ship. Soon we
weighed anchor, and sailed out again, and
so came once more to the middle of the
river. And now the sun was moving
toward his heights, and there had reached
us on the River Yann the song of those
countless myriads of choirs that attend
him in his progress round the world. For
the little creatures that have many legs
had spread their gauze wings easily on the
air, as a man rests his elbows on a balcony
and gave jubilant, ceremonial praises to
the sun, or else they moved together
on the air in wavering dances intricate
and swift, or turned aside to avoid the
onrush of some drop of water that a

86 A DREAMER'S TALES

breeze had shaken from a jungle orchid,
chilling the air and driving it before it,
as it fell whirring in its rush to the earth ;
but all the while they sang triumphantly.
" For the day is for us," they said,
" whether ,our great and sacred father
the Sun shall bring up more life like us
from the marshes, or whether all the
world shall end to-night." And there
sang all those whose notes are known
to human ears, as well as those whose
far more numerous notes have been never
heard by man.

To these a rainy day had been as an
era of war that should desolate continents
during all the lifetime of a man.

And there came out also from the dark
and steaming jungle to behold and rejoice
in the Sun the huge and lazy butter-
flies. And they danced, but danced idly,
on the ways of the air, as some haughty

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 87

queen of distant conquered lands might
in her poverty and exile dance, in some
encampment of the gipsies, for the mere
bread to live by, but beyond that would
never abate her pride to dance for a
fragment more.

And the butterflies sung of strange and
painted things, of purple orchids and of
lost pink cities and the monstrous colours
of the jungle's decay. And they, too,
were among those whose voices are
not discernible by human ears. And
as they floated above the river, going
from forest to forest, their splendour was
matched by the inimical beauty of the
birds who darted out to pursue them.
Or sometimes they settled on the white
and wax-like blooms of the plant that
creeps and clambers about the trees of
the forest ; and their purple wings flashed
out on the great blossoms as, when the

88 A DREAMER'S TALES

caravans go from Nurl to Thace, the
gleaming silks flash out upon the snow,
where the crafty merchants spread them
one by one to astonish the mountaineers
of the Hills of Noor.

But upon men and beasts the sun sent
a drowsiness. The river monsters along
the river's marge lay dormant in the
slime. The sailors pitched a pavilion,
with golden tassels, for the captain upon
the deck, and then went, all but the
helmsman, under a sail that they had
hung as an awning between two masts.
Then they told tales to one another, each
of his own city or of the miracles of his
god, until all were fallen asleep. The
captain offered me the shade of his pavilion
with the gold tassels, and there we talked
for awhile, he telling me that he was
taking merchandise to Perdondaris, and
that he would take back to fair Belzoond

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 89

things appertaining to the affairs of the
sea. Then, as I watched through the
pavilion's opening the brilliant birds and
butterflies that crossed and recrossed over
the river, I fell asleep, and dreamed that
I was a monarch entering his capital
underneath arches of flags, and all the
musicians of the world were there, playing
melodiously their instruments ; but no one
cheered.

In the afternoon, as the day grew cooler
again, I awoke and found the captain
buckling on his scimitar, which he had
taken off him while he rested.

And now we were approaching the
wide court of Astahahn, which opens upon
the river. Strange boats of antique
design were chained there to the steps.
As we neared it we saw the open marble
court, on three sides of which stood the
city fronting on colonnades. And in the

90 A DREAMER'S TALES

court and along the colonnades the people
of that city walked with solemnity and
care according to the rites of ancient
ceremony. All in that city was of ancient
device ; the carving on the houses, which,
when age had broken it, remained unre-
paired, was of the remotest times, and
everywhere were represented in stone
beasts that have long since passed away
from Earth — the dragon, the griffin, and
the hippogriffin, and the different species
of gargoyle. Nothing was to be found,
whether material or custom, that was
new in Astahahn. Now they took no
notice at all of us as we went by, but
continued their processions and cere-
monies in the ancient city, and the sailors,
knowing their custom, took no notice of
them. But I called, as we came near, to
one who stood beside the water's edge,
asking him what men did in Astahahn

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 91

and what their merchandise was, and with
whom they traded. He said, " Here we
have fettered and manacled Time, who
would otherwise slay the gods."

I asked him what gods they worshipped
in that city, and he said, " All those gods
whom Time has not yet slain." Then he
turned from me and would say no more,
but busied himself in behaving in accord-
ance with ancient custom. And so, ac-
cording to the will of Yann, we drifted
onwards and left Astahahn. The river
widened below Astahahn, and we found
in greater quantities such birds as prey on
fishes. And they were very wonderful
in their plumage, and they came not out
of the jungle, but flew, with their long
necks stretched out before them, and their
legs lying on the wind behind, straight up
the river over the mid-stream.

And now the evening began to gather

92 A DREAMER'S TALES

in. A thick white mist had appeared
over the river, and was softly rising
higher. It clutched at the trees with
long impalpable arms, it rose higher and
higher, chilling the air ; and white shapes
moved away into the jungle as though
the ghosts of shipwrecked mariners were
searching stealthily in the darkness for
the spirits of evil that long ago had
wrecked them on the Yann.

As the sun sank behind the field of
orchids that grew on the matted summit
of the jungle, the river monsters came
wallowing out of the slime in which they
had reclined during the heat of the day,
and the great beasts of the jungle came
down to drink. The butterflies a while
since were gone to rest. In little narrow
tributaries that we passed night seemed
already to have fallen, though the sun which
had disappeared from us had not yet set.

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 93

And now the birds of the jungle came
flying home far over us, with the sunlight
glistening pink upon their breasts, and
lowered their pinions as soon as they saw
the Yann, and dropped into the trees. And
the widgeon began to go up the river in
great companies, all whistling, and then
would suddenly wheel and all go down
again. And there shot by us the small and
arrow-like teal ; and we heard the manifold
cries of flocks of geese, which the sailors
told me had recently come in from cross-
ing over the Lispasian ranges ; every year
they come by the same way, close by the
peak of Mluna, leaving it to the left, and
the mountain eagles know the way they
come and — men say — the very hour, and
every year they expect them by the same
way as soon as the snows have fallen
upon the Northern Plains. But soon it
grew so dark that we saw these birds no

94 A DREAMER'S TALES

more, and only heard the whirring of their
wings, and of countless others besides,
until they all settled down along the
banks of the river, and it was the hour
when the birds of the night went forth.
Then the sailors lit the lanterns for the
night, and huge moths appeared, flapping
about the ship, and at moments their
gorgeous colours would be revealed by
the lanterns, then they would pass into
the night again, where all was black. And
again the sailors prayed, and thereafter
we supped and slept, and the helmsman
took our lives into his care.

When I awoke I found that we
had indeed come to Perdondaris, that
famous city. For there it stood upon the
left of us, a city fair and notable, and all
the more pleasant for our eyes to see
after the jungle that was so long with us.
And we were anchored by the market-place,

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 95

and the captain's merchandise was all dis-
played, and a merchant of Perdondaris
stood looking at it. And the captain
had his scimitar in his hand, and was
beating with it in anger upon the deck,
and the splinters were flying up from the
white planks ; for the merchant had offered
him a price for his merchandise that the
captain declared to be an insult to himself
and his country's gods, whom he now said
to be great and terrible gods, whose curses
were to be dreaded. But the merchant
waved his hands, which were of great fat-
ness, showing the pink palms, and swore
that of himself he thought not at all,
but only of the poor folk in the huts be-
yond the city to whom he wished to sell
the merchandise for as low a price as
possible, leaving no remuneration for him-
self. For the merchandise was mostly the
thick toomarund carpets that in the winter

96 A DREAMER'S TALES

keep the wind from the floor, and tollub
which the people smoke in pipes. There-
fore the merchant said if he offered a
piffek more the poor folk must go with-
out their toomarunds when the winter
came, and without their tollub in the even-
ings, or else he and his aged father must
starve together. Thereat the captain
lifted his scimitar to his own throat, say-
ing that he was now a ruined man, and
that nothing remained to him but death.
And while he was carefully lifting his
beard with his left hand, the merchant
eyed the merchandise again, and said that
rather than see so worthy a captain die,
a man for whom he had conceived an
especial love when first he saw the
manner in which he handled his ship,
he and his aged father should starve
together and therefore he offered fifteen
piffeks more.

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 97

When he said this the captain pro-
strated himself and prayed to his gods
that they might yet sweeten this mer-
chant's bitter heart — to his little lesser
gods, to the gods that bless Belzoond.

At last the merchant offered yet five
piffeks more. Then the captain wept, for
he said that he was deserted of his gods ;
and the merchant also wept, for he said
that he was thinking of his aged father, and
of how he soon would starve, and he hid
his weeping face with both his hands, and
eyed the tollub again between his fingers.
And so the bargain was concluded, and
the merchant took the toomarund and
tollub, paying for them out of a great
clinking purse. And these were packed
up into bales again, and three of the
merchant's slaves carried them upon their
heads into the city. And all the while

the sailors had sat silent, cross-legged in

o

98 A DREAMER'S TALES

a crescent upon the deck, eagerly watch-
ing the bargain, and now a murmur of
satisfaction arose among them, and they
began to compare it among themselves
with other bargains that they had known.
And I found out from them that there are
seven merchants in Perdondaris, and that
they had all come to the captain one by
one before the bargaining began, and
each had warned him privately against
the others. And to all the merchants
the captain had offered the wine of his
own country, that they make in fair
Belzoond, but could in no wise persuade
them to it. But now that the bargain
was over, and the sailors were seated
at the first meal of the day, the captain
appeared among them with a cask of that
wine, and we broached it with care and
all made merry together. And the cap-
tain was glad in his heart because he

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 99

knew that he had much honour in the
eyes of his men because of the bargain
that he had made. So the sailors drank
the wine of their native land, and soon
their thoughts were back in fair Belzoond
and the little neighbouring cities of Durl
and Duz.

But for me the captain poured into a
little glass some heavy yellow wine from a
small jar which he kept apart among his
sacred things. Thick and sweet it was,
even like honey, yet there was in its heart
a mighty, ardent fire which had authority
over souls of men. It was made, the
captain told me, with great subtlety by
the secret craft of a family of six who
lived in a hut on the mountains of Hian
Min. Once in these mountains, he said,
he followed the spoor of a bear, and he
came suddenly on a man of that family
who had hunted the same bear, and he

ioo A DREAMER'S TALES

was at the end of a narrow way with preci-
pice all about him, and his spear was
sticking in the bear, and the wound not
fatal, and he had no other weapon. And
the bear was walking towards the man,
very slowly because his wound irked him
— yet he was now very close. And what
the captain did he would not say, but
every year as soon as the snows are hard,
and travelling is easy on the Hian Min,
that man comes down to the market in
the plains, and always leaves for the
captain in the gate of fair Belzoond a
vessel of that priceless secret wine.

And as I sipped the wine and the
captain talked, I remembered me of stal-
wart noble things that I had long since
resolutely planned, and my soul seemed
to grow mightier within me and to domi-
nate the whole tide of the Yann. It
may be that I then slept. Or, if I did

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 101

not, I do not now minutely recollect
every detail of that morning's occupa-
tions. Towards evening, I awoke and
wishing to see Perdondaris before we left
in the morning, and being unable to wake
the captain, I went ashore alone. Cer-
tainly Perd6ndaris was a powerful city ;
it was encompassed by a wall of great
strength and altitude, having in it hollow
ways for troops to walk in, and battle-
ments along it all the way, and fifteen
strong towers on it in every mile, and
copper plaques low down where men
could read them, telling in all the lan-
guages of those parts of the Earth — one
language on each plaque — the tale of how
an army once attacked Perd6ndaris and
what befel that army. Then I entered
Perd6ndaris and found all the people
dancing, clad in brilliant silks, and playing
on the tambang as they danced. For a

102 A DREAMER'S TALES

fearful thunderstorm had terrified them
while I slept, and the fires of death, they
said, had danced over Perd6ndaris, and
now the thunder had gone leaping away
large and black and hideous, they said,
over the distant hills, and had turned
round snarling at them, showing his gleam-
ing teeth, and had stamped, as he went,
upon the hill-tops until they rang as
though they had been bronze. And
often and again they stopped in their
merry dances and prayed to the God they
knew not, saying, " O, God that we know
not, we thank Thee for sending the thunder
back to his hills." And I went on and
came to the market-place, and lying there
upon the marble pavement I saw the mer-
chant fast asleep and breathing heavily,
with his face and the palms of his hands
towards the sky, and slaves were fanning
him to keep away the flies. And from

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 103

the market-place I came to a silver temple
and then to a palace of onyx, and there
were many wonders in Perdondaris, and
I would have stayed and seen them all,
but as I came to the outer wall of the
city I suddenly saw in it a huge ivory
gate. For a while I paused and admired
it, then I came nearer and perceived the
dreadful truth. The gate was carved out
of one solid piece !

I fled at once through the gateway and
down to the ship, and even as I ran I
thought that I heard far off on the hills
behind me the tramp of the fearful beast
by whom that mass of ivory was shed,
who was perhaps even then looking for
his other tusk. When I was on the ship
again I felt safer, and I said nothing to
the sailors of what I had seen.

And now the captain was gradually
awakening. Now night was rolling up

104 A DREAMER'S TALES

from the East and North, and only the
pinnacles of the towers of Perdondaris
still took the fallen sunlight. Then I
went to the captain and told him quietly
of the thing I had seen. And he
questioned me at once about the gate,
in a low voice, that the sailors might not
know ; and I told him how the weight of
the thing was such that it could not have
been brought from afar, and the captain
knew that it had not been there a year
ago. We agreed that such a beast could
never have been killed by any assault
of man, and that the gate must have been
a fallen tusk, and one fallen near and
recently. Therefore he decided that it
were better to flee at once ; so he com-
manded, and the sailors went to the sails,
and others raised the anchor to the deck,
and just as the highest pinnacle of marble
lost the last rays of the sun we left

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 105

Perdondaris, that famous city. And night
came down and cloaked Perdondaris and
hid it from our eyes, which as things have
happened will never see it again ; for I
have heard since that something swift and
wonderful has suddenly wrecked Per-
dondaris in a day — towers, and walls, and
people.

And the night deepened over the
River Yann, a night all white with stars.
And with the night there rose the helms-
man's song. As soon as he had prayed
he began to sing to cheer himself all
through the lonely night. But first he
prayed, praying the helmsman's prayer.
And this is what I remember of it,
rendered into English with a very feeble
equivalent of the rhythm that seemed so
resonant in those tropic nights.

io6 A DREAMER'S TALES

To whatever god may hear.

Wherever there be sailors whether of
river or sea : whether their way be dark
or whether through storm : whether their
peril be of beast or of rock: or from
enemy lurking on land or pursuing on
sea: wherever the tiller is cold or the
helmsman stiff : wherever sailors sleep or
helmsmen watch : guard, guide, and return
us to the old land, that has known us :
to the far homes that we know.

To all the gods that are.

To whatever god may hear.

So he prayed, and there was silence.
And the sailors laid them down to rest
for the night. The silence deepened,
and was only broken by the ripples of
Yann that lightly touched our prow.
Sometimes some monster of the river
coughed.

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 107

Silence and ripples, ripples and silence
again.

And then his loneliness came upon the
helmsman, and he began to sing. And
he sang the market songs of Durl and
Duz, and the old dragon - legends of
Belzoond.

Many a song he sang, telling to
spacious and exotic Yann the little tales
and trifles of his city of Durl. And the
songs welled up over the black jungle
and came into the clear cold air above,
and the great bands of stars that look
on Yann began to know the affairs of
Durl and Duz, and of the shepherds that
dwelt in the fields between, and the flocks
that they had, and the loves that they had
loved, and all the little things that they
hoped to do. And as I lay wrapped up
in skins and blankets, listening to those
songs, and watching the fantastic shapes

io8 A DREAMER'S TALES

of the great trees like to black giants
stalking through the night, I suddenly
fell asleep.

When I awoke great mists were
trailing away from the Yann. And the
flow of the river was tumbling now
tumultuously, and little waves appeared ;
for Yann had scented from afar the ancient
crags of Glorm, and knew that their ravines
lay cool before him wherein he should
meet the merry wild Irillion rejoicing
from fields of snow. So he shook off
from him the torpid sleep that had come
upon him in the hot and scented jungle,
and forgot its orchids and its butterflies,
and swept on turbulent, expectant, strong ;
and soon the snowy peaks of the Hills
of Glorm came glittering into view. And
now the sailors were waking up from
sleep. Soon we all eat, and then the
helmsman laid him down to sleep while

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 109

a comrade took his place, and they all
spread over him their choicest furs.

And in a while we heard the sound that
the Trillion made as she came down danc-
ing from the fields of snow.

And then we saw the ravine in the
Hills of Glorm lying precipitous and
smooth before us, into which we were
carried by the leaps of Yann. And now
we left the steamy jungle and breathed
the mountain air ; the sailors stood up
and took deep breaths of it, and thought
of their own far-off Acroctian hills on
which were Durl and Duz — below them
in the plains stands fair Belzoond.

A great shadow brooded between the
cliffs of Glorm, but the crags were shining
above us like gnarled moons, and almost
lit the gloom. Louder and louder came
the Irillion's song, and the sound of her
dancing down from the fields of snow.

no A DREAMER'S TALES

And soon we saw her white and full of
mists, and wreathed with rainbows deli-
cate and small that she had plucked up
near the mountain's summit from some
celestial garden of the Sun. Then she
went away seawards with the huge grey
Yann and the ravine widened, and opened
upon the world, and our rocking ship
came through to the light of the day.

And all that morning and all the after-
noon we passed through the marshes
of Pondoovery ; and Yann widened there,
and flowed solemnly and slowly, and the
captain bade the sailors beat on bells to
overcome the dreariness of the marches.

At last the Irusian mountains came in
sight, nursing the villages of Pen-Kai and
Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo,
where priests propitiate the avalanche
with wine and maize. Then night came
down over the plains of Tlun, and we

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN in

saw the lights of Cappadarnia. We heard
the Pathnites beating upon drums as we
passed Imaut and Golzunda, then all
but the helmsman slept. And villages
scattered along the banks of the Yann
heard all that night in the helmsman's
unknown tongue the little songs of cities
that they knew not.

I awoke before dawn with a feeling
that I was unhappy before I remem-
bered why. Then I recalled that by the
evening of the approaching day, according
to all foreseen probabilities, we should
come to Bar-Wul-Yann, and I should part
from the captain and his sailors. And I
had liked the man because he had given
me of his yellow wine that was set apart
among his sacred things, and many a
story he had told me about his fair Bel-
zoond between the Acroctian hills and
the Hian Min. And I had liked the

ii2 A DREAMER'S TALES

ways that his sailors had, and the prayers
that they prayed at evening side by side,
grudging not one another their alien gods.
And I had a liking too for the tender
way in which they often spoke of Durl
and Duz, for it is good that men should
love their native cities and the little hills
that hold those cities up.

And I had come to know who would
meet them when they returned to their
homes, and where they thought the meet-
ings would take place, some in a valley
of the Acroctian hills where the road
comes up from Yann, others in the
gateway of one or another of the three
cities, and others by the fireside in the
home. And I thought of the danger that
had menaced us all alike outside Per-
dondaris, a danger that, as things have
happened, was very real.

And I thought too of the helmsman's

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 113

cheery song in the cold and lonely night,
and how he had held our lives in his
careful hands. And as I thought of this
the helmsman ceased to sing, and I looked
up and saw a pale light had appeared in
the sky, and the lonely night had passed ;
and the dawn widened, and the sailors
awoke.

And soon we saw the tide of the Sea
himself advancing resolute between Yann's
borders, and Yann sprang lithely at him
and they struggled awhile ; then Yann and
all that was his were pushed back north-
ward, so that the sailors had to hoist the
sails and, the wind being favourable, we
still held onwards.

And we passed Gondara and Narl
and Haz. And we saw memorable, holy
Golnuz, and heard the pilgrims praying.

When we awoke after the midday rest

we were coming near to Nen, the last of

H

ii4 A DREAMER'S TALES

the cities on the River Yann. And the
jungle was all about us once again, and
about Nen ; but the great Mloon ranges
stood up over all things, and watched the
city from beyond the jungle.

Here we anchored, and the captain and
I went up into the city and found that the
Wanderers had come into Nen.

And the Wanderers were a weird, dark
tribe, that once in every seven years came
down from the peaks of Mloon, having
crossed by a pass that is known to them
from some fantastic land that lies beyond.
And the people of Nen were all outside
their houses, and all stood wondering
at their own streets. For the men and
women of the Wanderers had crowded all
the ways, and every one was doing some
strange thing. Some danced astounding
dances that they had learned from the
desert wind, rapidly curving and swirling

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 115

till the eye could follow no longer.
Others played upon instruments beautiful
wailing tunes that were full of horror,
which souls had taught them lost by night
in the desert, that strange far desert from
which the Wanderers came.

None of their instruments were such
as were known in Nen nor in any part
of the region of the Yann ; even the horns
out of which some were made were of
beasts that none had seen along the river,
for they were barbed at the tips. And
they sang, in the language of none, songs
that seemed to be akin to the mysteries of
night and to the unreasoned fear that
haunts dark places.

Bitterly all the dogs of Nen distrusted
them. And the Wanderers told one
another fearful tales, for though no one
in Nen knew ought of their language yet
they could see the fear on the listeners'

n6 A DREAMER'S TALES

faces, and as the tale wound on the
whites of their eyes showed vividly in
terror as the eyes of some little beast
whom the hawk has seized. Then the
teller of the tale would smile and stop,
and another would tell his story, and the
teller of the first tale's lips would chatter
with fear. And if some deadly snake
chanced to appear the Wanderers would
greet him as a brother, and the snake
would seem to give his greetings to them
before he passed on again. Once that
most fierce and lethal of tropic snakes,
the giant lythra, came out of the jungle
and all down the street, the central street
of Nen, and none of the Wanderers
moved away from him, but they all played
sonorously on drums, as though he had
been a person of much honour ; and the
snake moved through the midst of them
and smote none.

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 117

Even the Wanderers' children could
do strange things, for if any one of them
met with a child of Nen the two would
stare at each other in silence with large
grave eyes ; then the Wanderer's child
would slowly draw from his turban a
live fish or snake. And the children of
Nen could do nothing of that kind at all.

Much I should have wished to stay and
hear the hymn with which they greet
the night, that is answered by the wolves
on the heights of Mloon, but it was now
time to raise the anchor again that the
captain might return from Bar-Wul-Yann
upon the landward tide. So we went on
board and continued down the Yann.
And the captain and I spoke little, for we
were thinking of our parting, which should
be for long, and we watched instead the
splendour of the westering sun. For the
sun was a ruddy gold, but a faint mist

n8 A DREAMER'S TALES

cloaked the jungle, lying low, and into
it poured the smoke of the little jungle
cities, and the smoke of them met to-
gether in the mist and joined into one
haze, which became purple, and was lit
by the sun, as the thoughts of men be-
come hallowed by some great and sacred
thing. Sometimes one column from a
lonely house would rise up higher than
the cities' smoke, and gleam by itself in
the sun.

And now as the sun's last rays were
nearly level, we saw the sight that I had
come to see, for from two mountains that
stood on either shore two cliffs of pink
marble came out into the river, all
glowing in the light of the low sun, and
they were quite smooth and of moun-
tainous altitude, and they nearly met,
and Yann went tumbling between them
and found the sea.

THE GATE OF YANN

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 119

And this was Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of
Yann, and in the distance through that bar-
rier's gap I saw the azure indescribable sea,
where little fishing-boats went gleaming by.

And the sun set, and the brief twilight
came, and the exultation of the glory of
Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the
pink cliffs glowed, the fairest marvel that
the eye beheld — and this in a land of
wonders. And soon the twilight gave
place to the coming out of stars, and the
colours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling
away. And the sight of those cliffs was
to me as some chord of music that a
master's hand had launched from the
violin, and which carries to Heaven or
Faery the tremulous spirits of men.

And now by the shore they anchored
and went no further, for they were sailors
of the river and not of the sea, and knew
the Yann but not the tides beyond.

And the time was come when the
captain and I must part, he to go back
again to his fair Belzoond in sight of the
distant peaks of the Hian Min, and I
to find my way by strange means back
to those hazy fields that all poets know,
wherein stand small mysterious cottages
through whose windows, looking west-
wards, you may see the fields of men, and
looking eastwards see glittering elfin
mountains, tipped with snow, going range
on range into the region of Myth, and
beyond it into the kingdom of Fantasy,
which pertain to the Lands of Dream.
Long we regarded one another, knowing
that we should meet no more, for my
fancy is weakening as the years slip by,
and I go ever more seldom into the Lands
of Dream. Then we clasped hands, un-
couthly on his part, for it is not the
method of greeting in his country, and he

IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 121

commended my soul to the care of his
own gods, to his little lesser gods, the
humble ones, to the gods that bless
Belzoond.

THE SWORD AND THE IDOL

IT was a cold winter's evening late in the
Stone Age ; the sun had gone down blaz-
ing over the plains of Thold ; there were
no clouds, only the chill blue sky and the
imminence of stars ; and the surface of the
sleeping Earth began to harden against
the cold of the night. Presently from
their lairs arose, and shook themselves
and went stealthily forth, those of Earth's
children to whom it is the law to prowl
abroad as soon as the dusk has fallen.
And they went pattering softly over the
plain, and their eyes shone in the dark,
and crossed and recrossed one another in
their courses. Suddenly there became
manifest in the midst of the plain that

SWORD AND THE IDOL 123

fearful portent of the presence of Man —
a little flickering fire. And the children
of Earth who prowl abroad by night
looked sideways at" it and snarled and
edged away ; all but the wolves, who came
a little nearer, for it was winter and the
wolves were hungry, and they had come
in thousands from the mountains, and
they said in their hearts, "We are strong."
Around the fire a little \ribe was en-
camped. They, too, had come from the
mountains, and from lands beyond them,
but it was in the mountains that the
wolves first winded them ; they picked up
bones at first that the tribe had dropped,
but they were closer now and on all sides.
It was Loz who had lit the fire. He had
killed a small furry beast, hurling his
stone axe at it, and had gathered a
quantity of reddish brown stones, and
had laid them in a long row, and placed

i24 A DREAMER'S TALES

bits of the small beast all along it ; then
he lit a fire on each side, and the stones
heated, and the bits began to cook. It
was at this time that the tribe noticed
that the wolves who had followed them
so far were no longer content with the
scraps of deserted encampments. A line
of yellow eyes surrounded them, and
when it moved it was to come nearer.
So the men of the tribe hastily tore up
brushwood, and felled a small tree with
their flint axes, and heaped it all over
the fire that Loz had made, and for a
while the great heap hid the flame, and
the wolves came trotting in and sat down
again on their haunches much closer than
before ; and the fierce and valiant dogs
that belonged to the tribe believed that
their end was about to come while fight-
ing, as they had long since prophesied it
would. Then the flame caught the lofty

SWORD AND THE IDOL 125

stack of brushwood, and rushed out of it,
and ran up the side of it, and stood up
haughtily far over the top, and the wolves
seeing this terrible ally of Man revelling
there in his strength, and knowing no-
thing of his frequent treachery to his
masters, went slowly away as though
they had other purposes. And for the
rest of that night the dogs of the en-
campment cried out to them and besought
them to come back. But the tribe lay
down all round the fire under thick furs
and slept. And a great wind arose and
blew into the roaring heart of the fire till
it was red no longer, but all pallid with
heat. With the dawn the tribe awoke.

Loz might have known that after such
a mighty conflagration nothing could re-
main of his small furry beast, but there
was hunger in him and little reason as
he searched among the ashes. What he

126 A DREAMER'S TALES

found there amazed him beyond measure ;
there was no meat, there was not even
his row of reddish brown stones, but
something longer than a man's leg and
narrower than his hand, was lying there
like a great flattened snake. When Loz
looked at its thin edges and saw that it
ran to a point, he picked up stones to
chip it and make it sharp. It was the
instinct of Loz to sharpen things. When
he found that it could not be chipped his
wonderment increased. It was many
hours before he discovered that he could
sharpen the edges by rubbing them with
a stone ; but at last the point was sharp,
and all one side of it except near the end,
where Loz held it in his hand. And Loz
lifted it and brandished it, and the Stone
Age was over. That afternoon in the
little encampment, just as the tribe moved
on, the Stone Age passed away, which,

SWORD AND THE IDOL 127

for perhaps thirty or forty thousand years,
had slowly lifted Man from among the
beasts and left him with his supremacy
beyond all hope of reconquest.

It was not for many days that any other
man tried to make for himself an iron
sword by cooking the same kind of small
furry beast that Loz had tried to cook.
It was not for many years that any thought
to lay the meat along stones as Loz had
done ; and when they did, being no longer
on the plains of Thold, they used flints or
chalk. It was not for many generations
that another piece of iron ore was melted
and the secret slowly guessed. Neverthe-
less one of Earth's many veils was torn
aside by Loz to give us ultimately the
steel sword and the plough, machinery and
factories ; let us not blame Loz if we think
that he did wrong, for he did all in ignor-
ance. The tribe moved on until it came

128 A DREAMER'S TALES

to water, and there it settled down under a
hill, and they built their huts there. Very
soon they had to fight with another tribe,
a tribe that was stronger than them ; but
the sword of Loz was terrible and his tribe
slew their foes. You might make one
blow at Loz, but then would come one
thrust from that iron sword, and there was
no way of surviving it. No one could
fight with Loz. And he became the ruler
of the tribe in the place of Iz, who hitherto
had ruled it with his sharp axe, as his
father had before him.

Now Loz begat Lo, and in his old age
gave his sword to him, and Lo ruled the
tribe with it. And Lo called the name of
the sword Death, because it was so swift
and terrible.

And Iz begat Ird, who was of no account.
And Ird hated Lo because he was of no
account by reason of the iron sword of Lo.

SWORD AND THE IDOL 129

One night Ird stole down to the hut of
Lo, carrying his sharp axe, and he went
very softly, but Lo's dog, Warner, heard
him coming, and he growled softly by his
master's door. When Ird came to the
hut he heard Lo talking gently to his
sword. And Lo was saying, " Lie still,
Death. Rest, rest, old sword," and 'then,
"What, again, Death? Be still. Be
still."

And then again : " What, art thou
hungry, Death ? Or thirsty, poor old
sword ? Soon, Death, soon. Be still
only a little." .

But Ird fled, for he did not like the
gentle tone of Lo as he spoke to his
sword.

And Lo begat Lod. And when Lo died
Lod took the iron sword and ruled the tribe.

And Ird begat Ith, who was of no

account, like his father.

I

i3o A DREAMER'S TALES

Now when Lod had smitten a man
or killed a terrible beast, Ith would go
away for a while into the forest rather
than hear the praises that would be given
to Lod.

And once, as Ith sat in the forest
waiting for the day to pass, he suddenly
thought he saw a tree trunk looking at
him as with a face. And Ith was afraid,
for trees should not look at men. But
soon Ith saw that it was only a tree and
not a man, though it was like a man. Ith
used to speak to this tree, and tell it about
Lod, for he dared not speak to any one
else about him. And Ith found comfort
in talking about Lod.

One day Ith went with his stone axe
into the forest, and stayed there many days.

He came back by night, and the next
morning when the tribe awoke they saw
something that was like a man and yet

SWORD AND THE IDOL 131

was not a man. And it sat on the hill
with its elbows pointing outwards and
was quite still. And Ith was crouching
before it, and hurriedly placing before it
fruits and flesh, and then leaping away
from it and looking frightened. Presently
all the tribe came out to see, but dared
not come quite close because of the fear
that they saw on the face of Ith. And
Ith went to his hut, and came back
again with a hunting spear-head and
valuable small stone knives, and reached
out and laid them before the thing that
was like a man, and then sprang away
from it.

And some of the tribe questioned Ith
about the still thing that was like a man,
and Ith said, " This is Ged." Then they
asked, "Who is Ged?" and Ith said,
" Ged sends the crops and the rain ; and
the sun and the moon are Ged's."

132 A DREAMER'S TALES

Then the tribe went back to their huts,
but later in the day some came again, and
they said to Ith, "Ged is only as we are,
having hands and feet." And Ith pointed
to the right hand of Ged, which was not
as his left, but was shaped like the paw of
a beast, and Ith said, "By this ye may
know that he is not as any man."

Then they said, " He is indeed Ged."
But Lod said, "He speaketh not, nor doth
he eat," and Ith answered, "The thunder
is his voice and the famine is his eating."

After this the tribe copied Ith, and
brought little gifts of meat to Ged ; and
Ith cooked them before him that Ged
might smell the cooking.

One day a great thunderstorm came
trampling up from the distance and raged
among the hills, and the tribe all hid
away from it in their huts. And Ith ap-
peared among the huts looking unafraid.

THE SILENCE OF GED

SWORD AND THE IDOL 133

And Ith said little, but the tribe thought
that he had expected the terrible storm
because the meat that they had laid before
Ged had been tough meat, and not the
best parts of the beasts they slew.

And Ged grew to have more honour
among the tribe than Lod. And Lod was
vexed.

One night Lod arose when all were
asleep, and quieted his dog, and took his
iron sword and went away to the hill.
And he came on Ged in the starlight,
sitting still, with his elbows pointing out-
wards, and his beast's paw, and the mark
of the fire on the ground where his food
had been cooked.

And Lod stood there for a while in
great fear, trying to keep to his purpose.
Suddenly he stepped up close to Ged and
lifted his iron sword, and Ged neither hit
nor shrank. Then the thought came into

134 A DREAMER'S TALES

Lod's mind, " Ged does not hit. What
will Ged do instead ? "

And Lod lowered his sword and
struck not, and his imagination began
to work on that, " What will Ged do
instead ? "

And the more Lod thought, the worse
was his fear of Ged.

And Lod ran away and left him.

Lod still ruled the tribe in battle or in
the hunt, but the chiefest spoils of battle
were given to Ged, and the beasts that
they slew were Ged's ; and all questions
that concerned war or peace, and questions
of law and disputes, were always brought
to him, and Ith gave the answers after
speaking to Ged by night.

At last Ith said, the day after an eclipse,
that the gifts which they brought to Ged
were not enough, that some far greater
sacrifice was needed, that Ged was very

SWORD AND THE IDOL 135

angry even now, and not to be appeased
by any ordinary sacrifice.

And Ith said that to save the tribe from
the anger of Ged he would speak to Ged
that night, and ask him what new sacrifice
he needed.

Deep in his heart Lod shuddered, for
his instinct told him that Ged wanted
Lod's only son, who should hold the iron
sword when Lod was gone.

No one would dare touch Lod because
of the iron sword, but his instinct said
in his slow mind again and again, " Ged
loves Ith. Ith has said so. Ith hates the
sword-holders."

" Ith hates the sword-holders. Ged
loves Ith."

Evening fell and the night came when
Ith should speak with Ged, and Lod be-
came ever surer of the doom of his race.

He lay down but could not sleep.

136 A DREAMER'S TALES

Midnight had barely come when Lod
arose and went with his iron sword again
to the hill.

And there sat Ged. Had Ith been to
him yet? Ith whom Ged loved, who
hated the sword-holders.

And Lod looked long at the old sword
of iron that had come to his grandfather
on the plains of Thold.

Good-bye, old sword ! And Lod laid
it on the knees of Ged, then went away.

And when Ith came, a little before dawn,
the sacrifice was found acceptable unto
Ged.

THE IDLE CITY

THERE was once a city which was an
idle city, wherein men told vain tales.

And it was that city's custom to tax all
men that would enter in, with the toll of
some idle story in the gate.

So all men paid to the watchers in the
gate the toll of an idle story, and passed
into the city unhindered and unhurt. And
in a certain hour of the night when the
king of that city arose and went pacing
swiftly up and down the chamber of his
sleeping, and called upon the name of
the dead queen, then would the watchers
fasten up the gate and go into that
chamber to the king, and, sitting on the
floor, would tell him all the tales that

137

138 A DREAMER'S TALES

they had gathered. And listening to them
some calmer mood would come upon the
king, and listening still he would lie down
again and at last fall asleep, and all the
watchers silently would arise and steal
away from the chamber.

A while ago wandering, I came to the
gate of that city. And even as I came
a man stood up to pay his toll to the
watchers. They were seated cross-legged
on the ground between him and the gate,
and each one held a spear. Near him
two other travellers sat on the warm sand
waiting. And the man said :

" Now the city of Nombros forsook the
worship of the gods and turned towards
God. So the gods threw their cloaks
over their faces and strode away from the
city, and going into the haze among the
hills passed through the trunks of the
olive groves into the sunset. But when

THE IDLE CITY 139

they had already left the earth, they turned
and looked through the gleaming folds
of the twilight for the last time at their
city ; and they looked half in anger and
half in regret, then turned and went away
for ever. But they sent back a Death,
who bore a scythe, saying to it : " Slay
half in the city that forsook us, but half
of them spare alive that they may yet
remember their old forsaken gods."

But God sent a destroying angel to
show that He was God, saying unto him :
" Go down and show the strength of mine
arm unto that city and slay half of the
dwellers therein, yet spare a half of them
that they may know that I am God."

And at once the destroying angel put
his hand to his sword, and the sword came
out of the scabbard with a deep breath,
like to the breath that a broad woodman
takes before his first blow at some giant

i4o A DREAMER'S TALES

oak. Thereat the angel pointed his arms
downwards, and bending his head between
them, fell forward from Heaven's edge,
and the spring of his ankles shot him
downwards with his wings furled behind
him. So he went slanting earthward
through the evening with his sword
stretched out before him, and he was like
a javelin that some hunter hath hurled
that returneth again to the earth : but
just before he touched it he lifted his
head and spread his wings with the under
feathers forward, and alighted by the bank
of the broad Flavro that divides the city
of Nombros. And down the bank of the
Flavro he fluttered low, like to a hawk
over a new-cut cornfield when the little
creatures of the corn are shelterless,
and at the same time down the other
bank the Death from the gods went
mowing.

THE IDLE CITY 141

At once they saw each other, and the
angel glared at the Death, and the Death
leered back at him, and the flames in the
eyes of the angel illumed with a red glare
the mist that lay in the hollows of the
sockets of the Death. Suddenly they fell
on one another, sword to scythe. And
the angel captured the temples of the gods,
and set up over them the sign of God,
and the Death captured the temples of
God, and led into them the ceremonies and
sacrifices of the gods ; and all the while
the centuries slipped quietly by going
down the Flavro seawards.

And now some worship God in the temple
of the gods, and others worship the gods
in the temple of God, and still the angel
hath not returned again to the rejoicing
choirs, and still the Death hath not gone
back to die with the dead gods ; but all
through Nombros they fight up and

142 A DREAMER'S TALES

down, and still on each side of the Flavro
the city lives.

And the watchers in the gate said,
11 Enter in."

Then another traveller rose up, and
said :

" Solemnly between Huhenwazi and
Nitcrana the huge grey clouds came float-
ing. And those great mountains, heavenly
Huhenwazi, and Nitcrana, the king of
peaks, greeted them, calling them brothers.
And the clouds were glad of their greeting
for they meet with companions seldom in
the lonely heights of the sky.

"But the vapours of evening said unto
the earth-mist, ' What are those shapes
that dare to move above us and to go
where Nitcrana is and Huhenwazi?'

" And the earth-mist said in answer unto
the vapours of evening, 'It is only an
earth-mist that has become mad and has

THE IDLE CITY 143

left the warm and comfortable earth, and
has in his madness thought that his place
is with Huhenwazi and Nitcrana.'

" ' Once,' said the vapours of evening,
' there were clouds, but this was many and
many a day ago, as our forefathers have
said. Perhaps the mad one thinks he is
the clouds.'

" Then spake the earth-worms from the
warm deeps of the mud, saying ' O, earth-
mist, thou art indeed the clouds, and there
are no clouds but thou. And as for
Huhenwazi and Nitcrana, I cannot see
them, and therefore they are not high, and
there are no mountains in the world but
those that I cast up every morning out of
the deeps of the mud.'

" And the earth-mist and the vapours
of evening were glad at the voice of
the earth-worms, and looking earthward
believed what they had said.

i44 A DREAMER'S TALES

"And indeed it is better to be as the
earth-mist, and to keep close to the warm
mud at night, and to hear the earth-
worm's comfortable speech, and not to
be a wanderer in the cheerless heights,
but to leave the mountains alone with
their desolate snow, to draw what comfort
they can from their vast aspect over all
the cities of men, and from the whispers
that they hear at evening of unknown
distant Gods."

And the watchers in the gate said,
" Enter in."

Then a man stood up who came out of the
west, and told a western tale. He said :

"There is a road in Rome that runs
through an ancient temple that once the
gods had loved ; it runs along the top of a
great wall, and the floor of the temple lies
far down beneath it, of marble, pink and
white.

THE IDLE CITY 145

" Upon the temple floor I counted to the
number of thirteen hungry cats.

" ' Sometimes,' they said among them-
selves, ' It was the gods that lived here,
sometimes it was men, and now it's cats.
So let us enjoy the sun on the hot marble
before another people comes.

" For it was at that hour of a warm after-
noon when my fancy is able to hear the
silent voices.

" And the fearful leanness of all those
thirteen cats moved me to go into a neigh-
bouring fish shop, and there to buy a
quantity of fishes. Then I returned and
threw them all over the railing at the top
of the great wall, and they fell for thirty
feet, and hit the sacred marble with a smack.

" Now, in any other town but Rome, or
in the minds of any other cats, the sight
of fishes falling out of heaven had surely

excited wonder. They rose slowly, and

K

146 A DREAMER'S TALES

all stretched themselves, then they came
leisurely towards the fishes. ' It is only
a miracle,' they said in their hearts."

And the watchers in the gate said,
"Enter in."

Proudly and slowly, as they spoke, drew
up to them a camel, whose rider sought for
entrance to the city. His face shone with
the sunset by which for long he had
steered for the city's gate. Of him they
demanded toll. Whereat he spoke to his
camel, and the camel roared and kneeled,
and the man descended from him. And
the man unwrapped from many silks a
box of divers metals wrought by the
Japanese, and on the lid of it were figures
of men who gazed from some shore at an
isle of the Inland Sea. This he showed
to the watchers, and when they had seen
it, said, "It has seemed to me that these
speak to each other thus :

THE IDLE CITY 147

" Behold now Oojni, the dear one of the
sea, the little mother sea that hath no
storms. She goeth out from Oojni sing-
ing a song, and she returneth singing over
her sands. Little is Oojni in the lap of
the sea, and scarce to be perceived by
wondering ships. White sails have never
wafted her legends afar, they are told not
by bearded wanderers of the sea. Her
fireside tales are known not to the North,
the dragons of China have not heard of
them, nor those that ride on elephants
through Ind.

11 Men tell the tales and the smoke ariseth
upwards ; the smoke departeth and the
tales are told.

" Oojni is not a name among the nations,
she is not known of where the merchants
meet, she is not spoken of by alien lips.

" Indeed, but Oojni is little among the
isles, yet is she loved by those that know

148 A DREAMER'S TALES

her coasts and her inland places hidden
from the sea.

" Without glory, without fame, and with-
out wealth, Oojni is greatly loved by a
little people, and by a few ; yet not by few,
for all her dead still love her, and oft by
night come whispering through her woods.
Who could forget Oojni even among the
dead?

" For here in Oojni, wot you, are homes
of men, and gardens, and golden temples
of the gods, and sacred places inshore from
the sea, and many murmurous woods.
And there is a path that winds over the
hills to go into mysterious holy lands
where dance by night the spirits of the
wood, or sing unseen in the sunlight ; and
no one goes into these holy lands, for who
that love Oojni would rob her of her
mysteries, and the curious aliens come not.
Indeed, but we love Oojni though she is

THE IDLE CITY 149

so little ; she is the little mother of our
race, and the kindly nurse of all seafaring
birds.

"And behold, even now caressing iher,
the gentle fingers of the mother sea, whose
dreams are afar with that old wanderer
Ocean.

" And yet let us forget not Fuzi-Yama,
for he stands manifest over clouds and
sea, misty below, and vague and indistinct,
but clear above for all the isles to watch.
The ships make all their journeys in his
sight, the nights and the days go by him
like a wind, the summers and winters
under him flicker and fade, the lives of
men pass quietly here and hence, and
Fuzi-Yama watches there — and knows."

And the watchers in the gate said,
" Enter in."

And I, too, would have told them a tale,
very wonderful and very true ; one that

150 A DREAMER'S TALES

I had told in many cities, which as yet
had no believers. But now the sun had
set, and the brief twilight gone, and
ghostly silences were rising from far and
darkening hills. A stillness hung over
that city's gate. And the great silence
of the solemn night was more accept-
able to the watchers in the gate than any
sound of man. Therefore they beckoned
to us, and motioned with their hands that
we should pass untaxed into the city.
And softly we went up over the sand,
and between the high rock pillars of the
gate, and a deep stillness settled among
the watchers, and the stars over them
twinkled undisturbed.

For how short a while man speaks, and
withal how vainly. And for how long he
is silent. Only the other day I met a
king in Thebes, who had been silent
already for four thousand years.

THE HASHISH MAN

I WAS at dinner in London the other day.
The ladies had gone upstairs, and no one
sat on my right ; on my left there was a
man I did not know, but he knew my name
somehow apparently, for he turned to me
after a while, and said, " I read a story of
yours about Bethmoora in a review."

Of course I remembered the tale. It
was about a beautiful Oriental city that
was suddenly deserted in a day — nobody
quite knew why. I said, " Oh, yes," and
slowly searched in my mind for some more
fitting acknowledgment of the compliment
that his memory had paid me.

I was greatly astonished when he said,
" You were wrong about the gnousar sick-
ness ; it was not that at all."

152 A DREAMER'S TALES

• I said, " Why ! Have you been there ? "
And he said, "Yes; I do it with has-
hish. I know Bethmoora well." And he
took out of his pocket a small box full of
some black stuff that looked like tar, but
had a stranger smell. He warned me not
to touch it with my finger, as the stain
remained for days. "I got it from a
gipsy," he said. " He had a lot,of it, as
it had killed his father." But I inter-
rupted him, for I wanted to know for
certain what it was that had made deso-
late that beautiful city, Bethmoora, and
why they fled from it swiftly in a day.
" Was it because of the Desert's curse?"
asked. And he said, " Partly it was the
fury of the Desert, and partly the advice
of the Emperor Thuba Mleen, for that
fearful beast is in some way connected
with the Desert on his mother's side."
And he told me this strange story :

THE HASHISH MAN 153

" You remember the sailor with the black
scar, who was there on the day that you
described when the messengers came on
mules to the gate of Bethmoora, and all
the people fled. I met this man in a
tavern, drinking rum, and he told me all
about the flight from Bethmoora, but
knew no more than you did what the
message was, or who had sent it. How-
ever, he said he would see Bethmoora
once more whenever he touched again at
an eastern port, even if he had to face
the Devil. He often said that he would
face the Devil to find out the mystery
of that message that emptied Bethmoora
in a day. And in the end he had to face
Thuba Mleen, whose weak ferocity he
had not imagined. For one day the sailor
told me he had found a ship, and I met
him no more after that in the tavern
drinking rum. It was about that time

154 A DREAMER'S TALES

that I got the hashish from the gipsy,
who had a quantity that he did not want.
It takes one literally out of oneself. It
is like wings. You swoop over distant
countries and into other worlds. Once
I found out the secret of the uni-
verse. I have forgotten what it was,
but I know that the Creator does not
take Creation seriously, for I remember
that He sat in Space with all His work
in front of Him and laughed. I have
seen incredible things in fearful worlds.
As it is your imagination that takes you
there, so it is only by your imagination
that you can get back. Once out in aether
I met a battered, prowling spirit, that had
belonged to a man whom drugs had killed
a hundred years ago ; and he led me to
regions that I had never imagined ; and
we parted in anger beyond the Pleiades,
and I could not imagine my way back.

THE HASHISH MAN 155

And I met a huge grey shape that was
the Spirit of some great people, perhaps
of a whole star, and I besought It to
show me my way home, and It halted
beside me like a sudden wind and pointed,
and, speaking quite softly, asked me if I
discerned a certain tiny light, and I saw
a far star faintly, and then It said to
me, ' That is the Solar System,' and
strode tremendously on. And somehow
I imagined my way back, and only just
in time, for my body was already stiffen-
ing in a chair in my room ; and the fire
had gone out and everything was cold,
and I had to move each finger one by
one, and there were pins and needles in
them, and dreadful pains in the nails,
which began to thaw ; and at last I could
move one arm, and reached a bell, and
for a long time no one came, because
every one was in bed. But at last a man

156 A DREAMER'S TALES

appeared, and they got a doctor ; and he
said that it was hashish poisoning, but it
would have been all right if I hadn't met
that battered, prowling spirit.

" I could tell you astounding things
that I have seen, but you want to know
who sent that message to Bethmoora.
Well, it was Thuba Mleen. And this is
how I know. I often went to the city
after that day that you wrote of (I used
to take hashish of an evening in my flat),
and I always found it uninhabited. Sand
had poured into it from the desert, and
the streets were yellow and smooth, and
through open, swinging doors the sand
had drifted.

" One evening I had put the guard in
front of the fire, and settled into a chair
and eaten my hashish, and the first thing
that I saw when I came to Bethmoora
was the sailor with the black scar, strolling

THE HASHISH MAN 157

down the street, and making footprints
in the yellow sand. And now I knew
that I should see what secret power it was
that kept Bethmoora uninhabited.

" I saw that there was anger in the
Desert, for there were storm clouds
heaving along the skyline, and I heard
a muttering amongst the sand.

" The sailor strolled on down the street,
looking into the empty houses as he
went ; sometimes he shouted and some-
times he sang, and sometimes he wrote
his name on a marble wall. Then he sat
down on a step and ate his dinner. After
a while he grew tired of the city, and came
back up the street. As he reached the
gate of green copper three men on camels
appeared.

" I could do nothing. I was only a
consciousness, invisible, wandering : my
body was in Europe. The sailor fought

158 A DREAMER'S TALES

well with his fists, but he was over-
powered and bound with ropes, and led
away through the Desert.

" I followed for as long as I could stay,
and found that they were going by the
way of the Desert round the Hills of Hap
towards Utnar Ve"hi, and then I knew
that the camel men belonged to Thuba
Mleen.

" I work in an insurance office all day,
and I hope you won't forget me if ever
you want to insure — life, fire, or motor —
but that's no part of my story. I was
desperately anxious to get back to my flat,
though it is not good to take hashish two
days running ; but I wanted to see what
they would do to the poor fellow, for
I had heard bad rumours about Thuba
Mleen. When at last I got away I had
a letter to write ; then I rang for my
servant, and told him that I must not be

THE HASHISH MAN 159

disturbed, though I left my door unlocked
in case of accidents. After that I made
up a good fire, and sat down and partook
of the pot of dreams. I was going to the
palace of Thuba Mleen.

" I was kept back longer than usual
by noises in the street, but suddenly I
was up above the town ; the European
countries rushed by beneath me, and there
appeared the thin white palace spires of
horrible Thuba Mleen. I found him
presently at the end of a little narrow
room. A curtain of red leather hung
behind him, on which all the names of
God, written in Yannish, were worked
with a golden thread. Three windows
were small and high. The Emperor
seemed no more than about twenty, and
looked small and weak. No smiles came
on his nasty yellow face, though he tittered
continually. As I looked from his low

i6o A DREAMER'S TALES

forehead to his quivering under lip, I
became aware that there was some horror
about him, though I was not able to per-
ceive what it was. And then I saw it —
the man never blinked ; and though later
on I watched those eyes for a blink, it
never happened once.

" And then I followed the Emperor's
rapt glance, and I saw the sailor lying
on the floor, alive but hideously rent,
and the royal torturers were at work all
round him. They had torn long strips
from him, but had not detached them,
and they were torturing the ends of them
far away from the sailor." The man that
I met at dinner told me many things
which I must omit. " The sailor was
groaning softly, and every time he
groaned Thuba Mleen tittered. I had
no sense of smell, but I could hear and
see, and I do not know which was the

THUBA MLEEN

THE HASHISH MAN 161

most revolting — the terrible condition of
the sailor or the happy unblinking face
of horrible Thuba Mleen.

" I wanted to go away, but the time was
not yet come, and I had to stay where I was.

" Suddenly the Emperor's face began
to twitch violently, and his under lip
quivered faster, and he whimpered with
anger, and cried with a shrill voice, in
Yannish, to the captain of his torturers
that there was a spirit in the room. I
feared not, for living men cannot lay
hands on a spirit, but all the torturers
were appalled at his anger, and stopped
their work, for their hands trembled with
fear. Then two men of the spear-guard
slipped from the room, and each of them
brought back presently a golden bowl,
with knobs on it, full of hashish ; and
the bowls were large enough for heads
to have floated in had they been filled

162 A DREAMER'S TALES

with blood. And the two men fell to
rapidly, each eating with two great
spoons — there was enough in each spoon-
ful to have given dreams to a hundred
men. And there came upon them soon
the hashish state, and their spirits
hovered, preparing to go free, while I
feared horribly, but ever and anon they fell
back again to the bodies, recalled by some
noise in the room. Still the men ate,
but lazily now, and without ferocity. At
last the great spoons dropped out of
their hands, and their spirits rose and
left them. I could not flee. And the
spirits were more horrible than the men,
because they were young men, and not
yet wholly moulded to fit their fearful
souls. Still the sailor groaned softly,
evoking little titters from the Emperor
Thuba Mleen. Then the two spirits
rushed at me, and swept me thence as

THE HASHISH MAN 163

gusts of wind sweep butterflies, and away
we went from that small, pale, heinous
man. There was no escaping from these
spirits' fierce insistence. The energy in
my minute lump of the drug was over-
whelmed by the huge spoonfuls that these
men had eaten with both hands. I was
whirled over Arvle Woondery, and
brought to the lands of Snith, and swept
on still until I came to Kragua, and
beyond this to those bleak lands that
are nearly unknown to fancy. And we
came at last to those ivory hills that are
named the Mountains of Madness, and I
tried to struggle against the spirits of that
frightful Emperor's men, for I heard on the
other side of the ivory hills the pittering of
those beasts that prey on the mad, as they
prowled up and down. It was no fault of
mine that my little lump of hashish could
not fight with their horrible spoonfuls. . . ."

[64 A DREAMER'S TALES

Some one was tugging at the hall-
door bell. Presently a servant came and
told our host that a policeman in the hall
wished to speak to him at once. He
apologised to us, and went outside, and
we heard a man in heavy boots, who
spoke in a low voice to him. My friend
got up and walked over to the window, and
opened it, and looked outside. " I should
think it will be a fine night," he said.
Then he jumped out. When we put our
astonished heads out of the window to
look for him, he was already out of sight.

POOR OLD BILL

IN an antique haunt of sailors, a tavern of
the sea, the light of day was fading. For
several evenings I had frequented this
place, in the hope of hearing something
from the sailors, as they sat over strange
wines, about a rumour that had reached
my ears of a certain fleet of galleons
of old Spain still said to be afloat in
the South Seas in some uncharted
region.

In this I was again to be disappointed.
Talk was low and seldom, and I was about
to leave, when a sailor, wearing ear-rings
of pure gold, lifted up his head from his
wine, and looking straight before him at

the wall, told this tale loudly :
165

166 A DREAMER'S TALES

(When later on a storm of rain arose
and thundered on the tavern's leaded
panes, he raised his voice without effort
and spoke on still. The darker it got
the clearer his wild eyes shone.)

"A ship with sails of the olden time
was nearing fantastic isles. We had
never seen such isles.

" We all hated the captain, and he
hated us. He hated us all alike, there
was no favouritism about him. And he
never would talk a word with any of us,
except sometimes in the evening when it
was getting dark he would stop and look
up and talk a bit to the men he had
hanged at the yard-arm.

" We were a mutinous crew. But
Captain was the only man that had
pistols. He slept with one under his
pillow and kept one close beside him.
There was a nasty look about the isles.

LITTLE COTTAGES . . . WHOSE LOOKS WE DID NOT LIKE

POOR OLD BILL 167

They were small and flat as though they
had come up only recently from the sea,
and they had no sand or rocks like honest
isles, but green grass down to the water.
And there were little cottages there whose
looks we did not like. Their thatches
came almost down to the ground, and
were strangely turned up at the corners,
and under the low eaves were queer dark
windows whose little leaded panes were
too thick to see through. And no one,
man or beast, was walking about, so
that you could not know what kind of
people lived there. But Captain knew.
And he went ashore and into one of
the cottages, and someone lit lights
inside, and the little windows wore an
evil look.

"It was quite dark when he came aboard
again, and he bade a cheery good-night to
the men that swung from the yard-arm,

1 68 A DREAMER'S TALES

and he eyed us in a way that frightened
poor old Bill.

" Next night we found that he had
learned to curse, for he came on a lot
of us asleep in our bunks, and among
them poor old Bill, and he pointed at us
with a finger, and made a curse that our
souls should stay all night at the top of
the masts. And suddenly there was the
soul of poor old Bill sitting like a monkey
at the top of the mast, and looking at
the stars, and freezing through and
through.

"We got up a little mutiny after that,
but Captain comes up and points with his
finger again, and this time poor old Bill
and all the rest are swimming behind the
ship through the cold green water, though
their bodies remain on deck.

"It was the cabin-boy who found out
that Captain couldn't curse when he was

POOR OLD BILL 169

drunk, though he could shoot as well at
one time as another.

"After that it was only a matter of
waiting, and of losing two men when the
time came. Some of us were murderous
fellows, and wanted to kill Captain, but
poor old Bill was for finding a bit of an
island, out of the track of ships, and leav-
ing him there with his share of our year's
provisions. And everybody listened to
poor old Bill, and we decided to maroon
Captain as soon as we caught him when
he couldn't curse.

"It was three whole days before Captain
got drunk again, and poor old Bill and all
had a dreadful time, for Captain invented
new curses every day, and wherever he
pointed his finger our souls had to go;
and the fishes got to know us, and so did
the stars, and none of them pitied us when
we froze on the masts or were hurried

170 A DREAMER'S TALES

through forests of seaweed and lost our
way — both stars and fishes went about
their businesses with cold, unastonished
eyes. Once when the sun had set and
it was twilight, and the moon was showing
clearer and clearer in the sky, and we
stopped our work for a moment because
Captain seemed to be looking away from
us at the colours in the sky, he suddenly
turned and sent our souls to the Moon.
And it was colder there than ice at night ;
and there were horrible mountains mak-
ing shadows ; and it was all as silent as
miles of tombs ; and Earth was shining up
in the sky as big as the blade of a scythe,
and we all got homesick for it, but could
not speak nor cry. It was quite dark
when we got back, and we were very
respectful to Captain all the next day,
but he cursed several of us again very
soon. What we all feared most was that

POOR OLD BILL 171

he would curse our souls to Hell, and none
of us mentioned Hell above a whisper for
fear that it should remind him. But on
the third evening the cabin-boy came and
told us that Captain was drunk. And we
all went to his cabin, and we found him
lying there across his bunk, and he shot
as he had never shot before ; but he had
no more than the two pistols, and he
would only have killed two men if he
hadn't caught Joe over the head with the
end of one of his pistols. And then we
tied him up. And poor old Bill put the
rum between Captain's teeth, and kept him
drunk for two days, so that he could not
curse, till we found a convenient rock.
And before sunset of the second day we
found a nice bare island for Captain, out
of the track of ships, about a hundred
yards long and about eighty wide ; and
we rowed him along to it in a little boat,

i;2 A DREAMER'S TALES

and gave him provisions for a year, the
same as we had ourselves, because poor
old Bill wanted to be fair. And we left
him sitting comfortable with his back to
a rock singing a sailor's song.

" When we could no longer hear Captain
singing we all grew very cheerful and
made a banquet out of our year's pro-
visions, as we all hoped to be home again
in under three weeks. We had three
great banquets every day for a week —
every man had more than he could eat,
and what was left over we threw on the
floor like gentlemen. And then one day,
as we saw San Huelgedos, and wanted to
sail in to spend our money, the wind
changed round from behind us and beat
us out to sea. There was no tacking
against it, and no getting into the harbour,
though other ships sailed by us and
anchored there. Sometimes a dead calm

POOR OLD BILL 173

would fall on us, while fishing boats all
around us flew before half a gale, and
sometimes the wind would beat us out
to sea when nothing else was moving.
All day we tried, and at night we laid
to and tried again next day. And all
the sailors of the other ships were spend-
ing their money in San Huelg^dos, and
we could not come nigh it. Then we
spoke horrible things against the wind
and against San Huelg&ios, and sailed
away.

" It was just the same at Norenna.

" We kept close together now and
talked in low voices. Suddenly poor old
Bill grew frightened. As we went all
along the Siractic coast-line, we tried
again and again, and the wind was wait-
ing for us in every harbour and sent us
out to sea. Even the little islands would
not have us. And then we knew that

174 A DREAMER'S TALES

there was no landing yet for poor old
Bill, and every one upbraided his kind
heart that had made them maroon Captain
on a rock, so as not to have his blood
upon their heads. There was nothing to
do but to drift about the seas. There
were no banquets now, because we feared
that Captain might live his year and keep
us out to sea.

" At first we used to hail all passing
ships, and used to try to board them in
the boats ; but there was no rowing
against Captain's curse, and we had to
give that up. So we played cards for a
year in Captain's cabin, night and day,
storm and fine, and every one promised
to pay poor old Bill when we got ashore.

"It was horrible to us to think what
a frugal man Captain really was, he that
used to get drunk every other day when-
ever he was at sea, and here he was still

POOR OLD BILL 175

alive, and sober too, for his curse still
kept us out of every port, and our pro-
visions were gone.

"Well, it came to drawing lots, and
Jim was the unlucky one. Jim only kept
us about three days, and then we drew
lots again, and this time it was the nigger.
The nigger didn't keep us any longer,
and we drew again, and this time it was
Charlie, and still Captain was alive.

"As we got fewer one of us kept us
longer. Longer and longer a mate used
to last us, and we all wondered how ever
Captain did it. It was five weeks over
the year when we drew Mike, and he
kept us for a week, and Captain was still
alive. We wondered he didn't get tired
of the same old curse ; but we supposed
things looked different when one is alone
on an island.

" When there was only Jakes and poor

176 A DREAMER'S TALES

old Bill and the cabin-boy and Dick, we
didn't draw any longer. We said that
the cabin-boy had had all the luck, and
he mustn't expect any more. Then poor
old Bill was alone with Jakes and Dick,
and Captain was still alive. When there
was no more boy, and the Captain still
alive, Dick, who was a huge strong man
like poor old Bill, said that it was Jakes'
turn, and he was very lucky to have
lived as long as he had. But poor old
Bill talked it all over with Jakes, and
they thought it better that Dick should
take his turn.

" Then there was Jakes and poor old
Bill ; and Captain would not die.

" And these two used to watch one
another night and day, when Dick was
gone and no one else was left to them.
And at last poor old Bill fell down in a
faint and lay there for an hour. Then

POOR OLD BILL 177

Jakes came up to him slowly with his
knife, and makes a stab at poor old Bill
as he lies there on the deck. And poor
old Bill caught hold of him by the wrist,
and put his knife into him twice to make
quite sure, although it spoiled the best
part of the meat. Then poor old Bill
was all alone at sea.

" And the very next week, before the
food gave out, Captain must have died on
his bit of an island ; for poor old Bill
heard Captain's soul going cursing over
the sea, and the day after that the ship
was cast on a rocky coast.

"And Captain's been dead now for over
a hundred years, and poor old Bill is safe
ashore again. But it looks as if Captain
hadn't done with him yet, for poor old
Bill doesn't ever get any older, and
somehow or other he doesn't seem to
die. Poor old Bill!"

M

iy8 A DREAMER'S TALES

When this was over the man's fascina-
tion suddenly snapped, and we all jumped
up and left him.

It was not only his revolting story, but
it was the fearful look in the eyes of the
man who told it, and the terrible ease
with which his voice surpassed the roar
of the rain, that decided me never again
to enter that haunt *f sailers — the tavern
of the sea.

THE BEGGARS

I WAS walking down Piccadilly not long
ago, thinking of nursery rhymes and regret-
ting old romance.

As I saw the shopkeepers walk by in
their black frock-coats and their black hats,
I thought of the old line in nursery annals,
" The merchants of London, they wear
scarlet."

The streets were all so unromantic,
dreary. Nothing could be done for
them, I thought — nothing. And then
my thoughts were interrupted by barking
dogs. Every dog in the street seemed
to be barking — every kind of dog, not
only the little ones but the big ones too.

They were all facing East towards the

179

i8o A DREAMER'S TALES

way I was coming by. Then I turned
round to look and had this vision, in
Piccadilly, on the opposite side to the
houses just after you pass the cab-rank.

Tall bent men were coming down the
street arrayed in marvellous cloaks. All
were sallow of skin and swarthy of hair,
and the most of them wore strange beards.
They were coming slowly, and they walked
with staves, and their hands were out
for alms.

All the beggars had come to town.

I would have given them a gold doubloon
engraven with the towers of Castille, but
I had no such coin. They did not seem
the people to whom it were fitting to offer
the same coin as one tendered for the use
of a taxicab (O marvellous, ill-made word,
surely the pass-word somewhere of some
evil order). Some of them wore purple
cloaks with wide green borders, and the

THE BEGGARS 181

border of green was a narrow strip with
some, and some wore cloaks of old and
faded red, and some wore violet cloaks,
and none wore black. And they begged
gracefully, as gods might beg for souls.

I stood by a lamp-post, and they came
up to it, and one addressed it, calling the
lamp-post brother, and said, " O lamp-post,
our brother of the dark, are there many
wrecks by thee in the tides of night ?
Sleep not, brother, sleep not. There were
many wrecks an it were not for thee."

It was strange : I had not thought of the
majesty of the street lamp and his long
watching over drifting men But he was
not beneath the notice of these cloaked
strangers.

And then one murmured to the street :
"Art thou weary, street? Yet a little
longer they shall go up and down, and
keep thee clad with tar and wooden bricks.

182 A DREAMER'S TALES

Be patient, street. In a while the earth-
quake cometh."

" Who are you ? " people said. " And
where do you come from ? "

" Who may tell what we are," they
answered, " or whence we come ? "

And one turned towards the smoke-
stained houses, saying, " Blessed be the
houses, because men dream therein."

Then I perceived, what I had never
thought, that all these staring houses were
not alike, but different one from another,
because they held different dreams.

And another turned to a tree that stood
by the Green Park railings, saying, " Take
comfort, tree, for the fields shall come
again."

And all the while the ugly smoke
went upwards, the smoke that has stifled
Romance and blackened the birds. This, I
thought, they can neither praise nor bless.

THE BEGGARS 183

And when they saw it they raised their
hands towards it, towards the thousand
chimneys, saying, " Behold the smoke.
The old coal-forests that have lain so long
in the dark, and so long still, are dancing
now and going back to the sun. Forget
not Earth, O our brother, and we wish
thee joy of the sun."

It had rained, and a cheerless stream
dropped down a dirty gutter. It had
come from heaps of refuse, foul and for-
gotten ; it had gathered upon its way
things that were derelict, and went to
sombre drains unknown to man or the
sun. It was this sullen stream as much
as all other causes that had made me say
in my heart that the town was vile, that
Beauty was dead in it, and Romance fled.

Even this thing they blessed. And one
that wore a purple cloak with broad green
border, said, " Brother, be hopeful yet, for

184 A DREAMER'S TALES

thou shalt surely come at last to the delect-
able Sea, and meet the heaving, huge, and
travelled ships, and rejoice byisles that know
the golden sun." Even thus they blessed
the gutter, and I felt no whim to mock.

And the people that went by, in their
black unseemly coats and their misshapen,
monstrous, shiny hats, the beggars also
blessed. And one of them said to one of
these dark citizens: "O twin of Night
himself, with thy specks of white at
wrists and neck like to Night's scattered
stars. How fearfully thou dost veil with
black thy hid, unguessed desires. They
are deep thoughts in thee that they will
not frolic with colour, that they say ' No '
to purple, and to lovely green ' Begone.'
Thou hast wild fancies that they must
needs be tamed with black, and terrible
imaginings that they must be hidden thus.
Has thy soul ^dreams of the angels, and

THE BEGGARS 185

of the walls of faery that thou hast guarded
it so utterly, lest it dazzle astonished eyes ?
Even so God hid the diamond deep down
in miles of clay.

The wonder of thee is not marred by
mirth.

Behold thou art very secret.

Be wonderful. Be full of mystery."

Silently the man in the black frock-coat
passed on. And I came to understand
when the purple beggar had spoken, that
the dark citizen had trafficked perhaps
with Ind, that in his heart were strange
and dumb ambitions : that his dumbness
was founded by solemn rite on the roots of
ancient tradition : that it might be over-
come one day by a cheer in the street or
by some one singing a song, and that when
this shopman spoke there might come
clefts in the world and people peering over
at the abyss.

i86 A DREAMER'S TALES

Then turning towards Green Park,
where as yet Spring was not, the beggars
stretched out their hands, and looking at
the frozen grass and the yet unbudding
trees they, chanting all together, prophesied
daffodils.

A motor omnibus came down the street,
nearly running over some of the dogs
that were barking ferociously still. It was
sounding its horn noisily.

And the vision went then.

CARCASSONNE

[In a letter from a friend whom I have
never seen, one of those that read
my books, this line was quoted —
" But he, he never came to Carcas-
sonne." I do not know the origin of
the line, but I made this tale about it.]

WHEN Camorak reigned at Arn, and the
world was fairer, he gave a festival to all
the Weald to commemorate the splendour
of his youth.

They say that his house at Arn was
huge and high, and its ceiling painted
blue ; and when evening fell men would
climb up by ladders and light the scores
of candles hanging from slender chains.

i88 A DREAMER'S TALES

And they say, too, that sometimes a cloud
would come, and pour in through the top
of one of the oriel windows, and it would
come over the edge of the stonework as
the sea-mist comes over a sheer cliff's
shaven lip where an old wind has blown
for ever and ever (he has swept away
thousands of leaves and thousands of
centuries, they are all one to him, he
owes no allegiance to Time). And the
cloud would re-shape itself in the hall's
lofty vault and drift on through it slowly,
and out to the sky again through another
window. And from its shape the knights
in Camorak's hall would prophesy the
battles and sieges of the next season of
war. They say of the hall of Camorak
at Arn that there hath been none like it
in any land, and foretell that there will be
never.

Hither had come in the folk of the

CARCASSONNE 189

Weald from sheepfold and from forest,
revolving slow thoughts of food, and
shelter, and love, and they sat down
wondering in that famous hall ; and
therein also were seated the men of
Arn, the town that clustered round the
King's high house, and was all roofed
with the red, maternal earth.

If old songs may be trusted, it was a
marvellous hall.

Many who sat there could only have
seen it distantly before, a clear shape in
the landscape, but smaller than a hill.
Now they beheld along the wall the
weapons of Camorak's men, of which
already the lute-players made songs, and
tales were told at evening in the byres.
There they descried the shield of Camorak
that had gone to and fro across so many
battles, and the sharp but dinted edges of
his sword ; there were the weapons of

190 A DREAMER'S TALES

Gadriol the Leal, and Norn, and Athoric
of the Sleety Sword, Heriel the Wild,
Yarold, and Thanga of Esk, their arms
hung evenly all round the hall, low where
a man could reach them ; and in the place
of honour in the midst, between the arms
of Camorak and of Gadriol the Leal,
hung the harp of Arleon. And of all
the weapons hanging on those walls none
were more calamitous to Camorak's foes
than was the harp of Arleon. For to a
man that goes up against a strong place
on foot, pleasant indeed is the twang and
jolt of some fearful engine of war that his
fellow-warriors are working behind him,
from which huge rocks go sighing over
his head and plunge among his foes ; and
pleasant to a warrior in the wavering fight
are the swift commands of his King, and
a joy to him are his comrades' distant
cheers exulting suddenly at a turn of the

CARCASSONNE 191

war. All this and more was the harp to
Camorak's men ; for not only would it
cheer his warriors on, but many a time
would Arleon of the Harp strike wild
amazement into opposing hosts by some
rapturous prophecy suddenly shouted out
while his hand swept over the roaring
strings. Moreover, no war was ever de-
clared till Camorak and his men had
listened long to the harp, and were- elate
with the music and mad against peace.
Once Arleon, for the sake of a rhyme,
had made war upon Estabonn ; and an
evil king was overthrown, and honour and
glory won ; from such queer motives does
good sometimes accrue.

Above the shields and the harps all
round the hall were the painted figures
of heroes of fabulous famous songs. Too
trivial, because too easily surpassed by
Camorak's men, seemed all the victories

192 A DREAMER'S TALES

that the earth had known ; neither was
any trophy displayed of Camorak's seventy
battles, for these were as nothing to his
warriors or him compared with those
things that their youth had dreamed and
which they mightily purposed yet to do.

Above the painted pictures there was
darkness, for evening was closing in, and
the candles swinging on their slender
chains were not yet lit in the roof; it
was as though a piece of the night had
been builded in to the edifice like a huge
natural rock that juts into a house. And
there sat all the warriors of Arn and the
Weald-folk wondering at them ; and none
were more than thirty, and all were skilled
in war. And Camorak sat at the head of
all, exulting in his youth.

We must wrestle with Time for some
seven decades, and he is a weak and puny
antagonist in the first three bouts.

CARCASSONNE 193

Now there was present at this feast a
diviner, one who knew the schemes of
Fate, and he sat among the people of
the Weald and had no place of honour,
for Camorak and his men had no fear
of Fate. And when the meat was eaten
and the bones cast aside, the king rose
up from his chair, and having drunken
wine, and being in the glory of his
youth and with all his knights about
him, called to the diviner, saying, "Pro-
phesy."

And the diviner rose up, stroking his
grey beard, and spake guardedly — " There
are certain events," he said, "upon the
ways of Fate that are veiled even from
a diviner's eyes, and many more are clear
to us that were better veiled from all ;
much I know that is better unforetold,
and some things that I may not foretell
on pain of centuries of punishment. But

N

i94 A DREAMER'S TALES

this I know and foretell — that you will
never come to Carcassonne."

Instantly there was a buzz of talk tell-
ing of Carcassonne — some had heard of
it in speech or song, some had read of
it, and some had dreamed of it. And
the king sent Arleon of the Harp down
from his right hand to mingle with the
Weald-folk to hear aught that any told
of Carcassonne. But the warriors told
of the places they had won to — many a
hard-held fortress, many a far-off land,
and swore that they would come to
Carcassonne.

And in a while came Arleon back to
the king's right hand, and raised his harp
and chanted and told of Carcassonne.
Far away it was, and far and far away,
a city of gleaming ramparts rising one
over other, and marble terraces behind
the ramparts, and fountains shimmering

CARCASSONNE 195

on the terraces. To Carcassonne the
elf-kings with their fairies had first re-
treated from men, and had built it on
an evening late in May by blowing
their elfin horns. Carcassonne! Carcas-
sonne !

Travellers had seen it sometimes like a
clear dream, with the sun glittering on its
citadel upon a far-off hill-top, and then
the clouds had come or a sudden mist ;
no one had seen it long or come quite
close to it ; though once there were some
men that came very near, and the smoke
from the houses blew into their faces, a
sudden gust — no more, and these declared
that some one was burning cedarwood
there. Men have dreamed that there is a
witch there, walking alone through the
cold courts and corridors of marmorean
palaces, fearfully beautiful still for all her
four-score centuries, singing the second

196 A DREAMER'S TALES

oldest song, which was taught her by the
sea, shedding tears for loneliness from
eyes that would madden armies, yet will
she not call her dragons home — Carcas-
sonne is terribly guarded. Sometimes she
swims in a marble bath through whose
deeps a river tumbles, or lies all morning
on the edge of it to dry slowly in the sun,
and watches the heaving river trouble the
deeps of the bath. It flows through the
caverns of earth for further than she
knows, and coming to light in the witch's
bath goes down through the earth again
to its own peculiar sea.

In autumn sometimes it comes down
black with snow that spring has molten in
unimagined mountains, or withered blooms
of mountain shrubs go beautifully by.

When there is blood in the bath she
knows there is war in the mountains ; and yet
she knows not where those mountains are.

CARCASSONNE 197

When she sings the fountains dance up
from the dark earth, when she combs her
hair they say there are storms at sea, when
she is angry the wolves grow brave and all
come down to the byres, when she is sad
the sea is sad, and both are sad for ever.
Carcassonne ! Carcassonne !

This city is the fairest of the wonders
of Morning ; the sun shouts when he
beholdeth it ; for Carcassonne Evening
weepeth when Evening passeth away.

And Arleon told how many goodly
perils were round about the city, and
how the way was unknown, and it was a
knightly venture. Then all the warriors
stood up and sang of the splendour of
the venture. And Camorak swore by
the gods that had builded Arn, and by
the honour of his warriors that, alive or
dead, he would come to Carcassonne.

But the diviner rose and passed out of

198 A DREAMER'S TALES

the hall, brushing the crumbs from him
with his hands and smoothing his robe as
he went.

Then Camorak said, " There are many
things to be planned, and counsels to be
taken, and provender to be gathered.
Upon what day shall we start ? " And
all the warriors answering shouted, "Now."
And Camorak smiled thereat, for he had
but tried them. Down then from the
walls they took their weapons, Sikorix,
Kelleron, Aslof, Wole of the Axe; Huhe-
noth, Peace-breaker ; Wolwuf, Father of
War ; Tarion, Lurth of the War-cry, and
many another. Little then dreamed the
spiders that sat in that ringing hall of
the unmolested leisure what they were
soon to enjoy.

When they were armed they all formed
up and marched out of the hall, and Arleon
strode before them singing of Carcassonne.

CARCASSONNE 199

But the folk of the Weald arose and
went back well-fed to their byres. They
had no need of wars or of rare perils.
They were ever at war with hunger. A
long drought or hard winter were to them
pitched battles ; if the wolves entered a
sheep-fold it was like the loss of a fortress,
a thunder-storm on the harvest was like
an ambuscade. Well-fed, they went back
slowly to their byres, being at truce with
hunger : and the night filled with stars.

And black against the starry sky ap-
peared the round helms of the warriors as
they passed the tops of the ridges, but in
the valleys they sparkled now and then as
the starlight flashed on steel.

They followed behind Arleon going
south, whence rumours had always come
of Carcassonne : so they marched in the
starlight, and he before them singing.

When they had marched so far that

200 A DREAMER'S TALES

they heard no sound from Arn, and even
inaudible were her swinging bells, when
candles burning late far up in towers no
longer sent them their disconsolate wel-
come ; in the midst of the pleasant night
that lulls the rural spaces, weariness came
upon Arleon and his inspiration failed. It
failed slowly. Gradually he grew less sure
of the way to Carcassonne. Awhile he
stopped to think, and remembered the way
again ; but his clear certainty was gone,
and in its place were efforts in his mind to
recall old prophecies and shepherd's songs
that told of the marvellous city. Then as
he said over carefully to himself a song
that a wanderer had learnt from a goat-
herd's boy far up the lower slope of
ultimate southern mountains, fatigue came
down upon his toiling mind like snow on
the winding ways of a city noisy by night,
stilling all.

CARCASSONNE 201

He stood, and the warriors closed up to
him. For long they had passed by great
oaks standing solitary here and there, like
giants taking huge breaths of the night air
before doing some furious deed ; now they
had come to the verge of a black forest;
the tree-trunks stood like those great-
columns in an Egyptian hall whence God
in an older mood received the praise of
men ; the top of it sloped the way of an
ancient wind. Here they all halted and
lighted a fire of branches, striking sparks
from flint into a heap of bracken. They
eased them of their armour, and sat round
the fire, and Camorak stood up there and
addressed them, and Camorak said : " We
go to war with Fate, who has doomed that
I shall not come to Carcassonne. And if
we turn aside but one of the dooms of
Fate, then the whole future of the world is
ours, and the future that Fate has ordered

202 A DREAMER'S TALES

is like the dry course of an averted river.
But if such men as we, such resolute con-
querors, cannot prevent one doom that
Fate has planned, then is the race of man
enslaved for ever to do its petty and
allotted task."

Then they all drew their swords, and
waved them high in the firelight, and
declared war on Fate.

Nothing in the sombre forest stirred or
made any sound.

Tired men do not dream of war. When
morning came over the gleaming fields a
company that had set out from Arn dis-
covered the camping-place of the warriors,
and brought pavilions and provender.
And the warriors feasted, and the birds
in the forest sang, and the inspiration of
Arleon awoke.

Then they arose, and following Arleon,
entered the forest, and marched away to

CARCASSONNE 203

the South. And many a woman of Arn
sent her thoughts with them as she played
alone some old monotonous tune, but their
own thoughts were far before them, skim-
ming over the bath through whose deeps
the river tumbles in marble Carcassonne.

When butterflies were dancing on the
air, and the sun neared the zenith, pavilions
were pitched, and all the warriors rested ;
and then they feasted again, and then
played knightly games, and late in the
afternoon marched on once more, singing
of Carcassonne.

And night came down with its mystery
on the forest, and gave their demoniac
look again to the trees, and rolled up
out of misty hollows a huge and yellow
moon.

And the men of Arn lit fires, and sudden
shadows arose and leaped fantastically
away. And the night-wind blew, arising

204 A DREAMER'S TALES

like a ghost, and passed between the
tree-trunks, and slipped down shimmering
glades, and waked the prowling beasts
still dreaming of day, and drifted nocturnal
birds afield to menace timorous things, and
beat the roses against cottagers' panes,
and whispered news of the befriending
night, and wafted to the ears 'of wandering
men the sound of a maiden's song, and
gave a glamour to the lutanist's tune
played in his loneliness on distant hills ;
and the deep eyes of moths glowed like
a galleon's lamps, and they spread their
wings and sailed their familiar sea.
Upon this night- wind also the dreams
of Camorak's men floated to Carcassonne.
All the next morning they marched, and
all the evening, and knew they were near-
ing now the deeps of the forest. And the
citizens of Arn kept close together and
close behind the warrors. For the deeps of

CARCASSONNE 205

the forest were all unknown to travellers,
but not unknown to those tales of fear
that men tell at evening to their friends, in
the comfort and the safety of their hearths.
Then night appeared, and an enormous
moon. And the men of Camorak slept.
Sometimes they woke, and went to sleep
again; and those that stayed awake for
long and listened heard heavy two-footed
creatures pad through the night on paws.

As soon as it was light the unarmed
men of Arn began to slip away, and went
back by bands through the forest. When
darkness came they did not stop to sleep,
but continued their flight straight on until
they came to Arn, and added there by
the tales they told to the terror of the
forest.

But the warriors feasted, and afterwards
Arleon rose, and played his harp, and led
them on again ; and a few faithful servants

206 A DREAMER'S TALES

stayed with them still. And they marched
all day through a gloom that was as old as
night, but Arleon's inspiration burned in
his mind like a star. And he led them
till the birds began to drop into the tree-
tops, and it was evening and they all
encamped. They had only one pavilion
left to them now, and near it they lit a fire,
and Camorak posted a sentry with drawn
sword just beyond the glow of the fire-
light. Some of the warriors slept in the
pavilion and others round about it.

When dawn came something terrible had
killed and eaten the sentry. But the
splendour of the rumours of Carcassonne
and Fate's decree that they should never
come there, and the inspiration of Arleon
and his harp, all urged the warriors on ;
and they marched deeper and deeper all
day into the forest.

Once they saw a dragon that had caught

CARCASSONNE 207

a bear and was playing with it, letting it
run a little way and overtaking it with a
paw.

They came at last to a clear space in
the forest just before nightfall. An odour
of flowers arose from it like a mist, and
every drop of dew interpreted heaven unto
itself.

It was the hour when twilight kisses
Earth.

It was the hour when a meaning comes
into senseless things, and trees out-majesty
the pomp of monarchs, and the timid
creatures steal abroad to feed, and as yet
the beasts of prey harmlessly dream, and
Earth utters a sigh, and it is night.

In the midst of the wide clearing
Camorak's warriors camped, and rejoiced
to see the stars again appearing one by
one.

That night they ate the last of their

208 A DREAMER'S TALES

provisions, and slept unmolested by the
prowling things that haunt the gloom of
the forest.

On the next day some of the warriors
hunted stags, and others lay in rushes by
a neighbouring lake and shot arrows at
water-fowl. One stag was killed, and some
geese, and several teal.

Here the adventurers stayed, breathing
the pure wild air that cities know not ; by
day they hunted, and lit fires by night, and
sang and feasted, and forgot Carcassonne.
The terrible denizens of the gloom never
molested them, venison was plentiful, and
all manner of water-fowl : they loved the
chase by day, and by night their favourite
songs. Thus day after day went by, thus
week after week. Time flung over this
encampment a handful of moons, the gold
and silver moons that waste the year away ;
Autumn and Winter passed, and Spring

CARCASSONNE 209

appeared ; and still the warriors hunted
and feasted there.

One night of the springtide they were
feasting about a fire and telling tales of
the chase, and the soft moths came out
of the dark and flaunted their colours in
the firelight, and went out grey into the
dark again ; and the night wind was
cool upon the warriors' necks, and the
camp-fire was warm in their faces, and
a silence had settled among them after
some song, and Arleon all at once rose
suddenly up, remembering Carcassonne.
And his hand swept over the strings of
his harp, awaking the deeper chords, like
the sound of a nimble people dancing
their steps on bronze, and the music
rolled away into the night's own silence,
and the voice of Arleon rose :

"When there is blood in the bath she

knows there is war in the mountains, and

o

210 A DREAMER'S TALES

longs for the battle-shout of kingly
men."

And suddenly all shouted, "Carcas-
sonne ! " And at that word their idle-
ness was gone as a dream is gone from a
dreamer waked with a shout. And soon
the great march began that faltered no
more nor wavered. Unchecked by
battles, undaunted in lonesome spaces,
ever unwearied by the vulturous years,
the warriors of Camorak held on ; and
Arleon's inspiration led them still. They
cleft with the music of Arleon's harp the
gloom of ancient silences ; they went sing-
ing into battles with terrible wild men, and
came out singing, but with fewer voices ;
they came to villages in valleys full of the
music of bells, or saw the lights at dusk of
cottages sheltering others.

They became a proverb for wandering,
and a legend arose of strange, disconsolate

CARCASSONNE 211

men. Folks spoke of them at night-
fall when the fire was warm and rain
slipped down the eaves ; and when the
wind was high small children feared the
Men Who Would Not Rest were going
clattering past. Strange tales were told
of men in old grey armour moving at
twilight along the tops of the hills and
never asking shelter ; and mothers told
their boys who grew impatient of home
that the grey wanderers were once so
impatient and were now hopeless of rest,
and were driven along with the rain when-
ever the wind was angry.

But the wanderers were cheered in their
wandering by the hope of coming to Car-
cassonne, and later on by anger against
Fate, and at last they marched on still
because it seemed better to march on than
to think.

For many years they had wandered

212 A DREAMER'S TALES

and had fought with many tribes ; often
they gathered legends in villages and
listened to idle singers singing songs ;
and all the rumours of Carcassonne still
came from the South.

And then one day they came to a hilly
land with a legend in it that only three
valleys away a man might see, on clear
days, Carcassonne. Tired though they
were and few, and worn with the years
which had all brought them wars, they
pushed on instantly, led still by Arleon's
inspiration which dwindled in his age,
though he made music with his old
harp still.

All day they climbed down into the
first valley and for two days ascended,
and came to the Town That May Not
Be Taken In War below the top of the
mountain, and its gates were shut against
them, and there was no way round. To

CARCASSONNE 213

left and right steep precipices stood for
as far as eye could see or legend tell of,
and the pass lay through the city. There-
fore Camorak drew up his remaining war-
riors in line of battle to wage their last
war, and they stepped forward over the
crisp bones of old, unburied armies.

No sentinel defied them in the gate,
no arrow flew from any tower of war.
One citizen climbed alone to the moun-
tain's top, and the rest hid themselves in
sheltered places.

Now, in the top of the mountain was
a deep, bowl-like cavern in the rock, in
which fires bubbled softly. But if any
cast a boulder into the fires, as it was
the custom for one of those citizens to
do when enemies approached them, the
mountain hurled up intermittent rocks for
three days, and the rocks fell flaming all
over the town and all round about it.

2i4 A DREAMER'S TALES

And just as Camorak's men began to
batter the gate they heard a crash on
the mountain, and a great rock fell be-
yond them and rolled into the valley.
The next two fell in front of them on
the iron roofs of the town. Just as they
entered the town a rock found them
crowded in a narrow street, and shattered
two of them. The mountain smoked and
panted ; with every pant a rock plunged
into the streets or bounced along the
heavy iron roofs, and the smoke went
slowly up, and up, and up.

When they had come through the long
town's empty streets to the locked gate
at the end, only fifteen were left. When
they had broken down the gate there
were only ten alive. Three more were
killed as they went up the slope, and two
as they passed near the terrible cavern.
Fate let the rest go some way down the

CARCASSONNE 215

mountain upon the other side, and then
took three of them. Camorak and
Arleon alone were left alive. And night
came down on the valley to which they
had come, and was lit by flashes from
the fatal mountain ; and the two mourned
for their comrades all night long.

But when the morning came they re-,
membered their war with Fate, and their
old resolve to come to Carcassonne, and
the voice of Arleon rose in a quavering
song, and snatches of music from his old
harp, and he stood up and marched with
his face southwards as he had done for
years, and behind him Camorak went.
And when at last they climbed from the
third valley, and stood on the hill's summit
in the golden sunlight of evening, their
aged eyes saw only miles of forest and the
birds going to roost.

Their beards were white, and they had

travelled very far and hard ; it was the
time with them when a man rests from
labours and dreams in light sleep of the
years that were and not of the years to come.

Long they looked southwards ; and the
sun set over remoter forests, and glow-
worms lit their lamps, and the inspiration
of Arleon rose and flew away for ever, to
gladden, perhaps, the dreams of younger
men.

And Arleon said : " My King, I know
no longer the way to Carcassonne."

And Camorak smiled, as the aged
smile, with little cause for mirth, and
said : " The years are going by us like
huge birds, whom Doom and Destiny
and the schemes of God have frightened
up out of some old grey marsh. And it
may well be that against these no warrior
may avail, and that Fate has conquered
us, and that our quest has failed."

CARCASSONNE 217

And after this they were silent.

Then they drew their swords, and side
by side went down into the forest, still
seeking for Carcassonne.

I think they got not far ; for there were
deadly marshes in that forest, and gloom
that outlasted the nights, and fearful
beasts accustomed to its ways. Neither
is there any legend, either in verse or
among the songs of the people of the
fields, of any having come to Carcassonne.

IN ZACCARATH

" COME," said the King in sacred Zaccarath,
" and let our prophets prophesy before us."

A far-seen jewel of light was the holy
palace, a wonder to the nomads on the
plains.

There was the King with all his under-
lords, and the lesser kings that did him
vassalage, and there were all his queens
with all their jewels upon them.

Who shall tell of the splendour in which
they sat ; of the thousand lights and the
answering emeralds ; of the dangerous
beauty of that hoard of queens, or the
flash of their laden necks ?

There was a necklace there of rose-pink
pearls beyond the art of dreamer to
imagine. Who shall tell of the amethyst

IN ZACCARATH 219

chandeliers, where torches, soaked in rare
Bhyrinian oils, burned and gave off a
scent of blethany ? l

Enough to say that when the dawn came
up it appeared by contrast pallid and
unlovely and stripped all bare of its glory,
so that it hid itself with rolling clouds.

" Come," said the King, " let our pro-
phets prophesy."

Then the heralds stepped through the
ranks of the King's silk-clad warriors
who lay oiled and scented upon velvet
cloaks, with a pleasant breeze among them
caused by the fans of slaves ; even their
casting- spears were set with jewels ;

1 The herb marvellous, which, growing near the sum-
mit of Mount Zaumnos, scents all the Zaumnian range,
and is smelt far out on the Kepuscran plains, and
even, when the wind is from the mountains, in the
streets of the city of Ognoth. At night it closes its
petals and is heard to breathe, and its breath is a
swift poison. This it does even by day if the snows
are disturbed about it. No plant of this has ever
been captured alive by a hunter.

through their ranks the heralds went
with mincing steps, and came to the pro-
phets, clad in brown and black, and one
of them they brought and set him before
the King. And the King looked at him
and said, " Prophesy unto us."

And the prophet lifted his head, so
that his beard came clear from his brown
cloak, and the fans of the slaves that
fanned the warriors wafted the tip of it
a little awry. And he spake to the King,
and spake thus :

" Woe unto thee, King, and woe unto
Zaccarath. Woe unto thee, and woe unto
thy women, for your fall shall be sore
and soon. Already in Heaven the gods
shun thy god : they know his doom and
what is written of him : he sees oblivion
before him like a mist. Thou hast
aroused the hate of the mountaineers.
They hate thee all along the crags of

IN ZACCARATH 221

Droom. The evilness of thy days shall
bring down the Zeedians on thee as the
suns of springtide bring the avalanche
down. They shall do unto Zaccarath as
the avalanche doth unto the hamlets
of the valley." When the queens
chattered or tittered among themselves,
he merely raised his voice and still
spake on : " Woe to these walls and the
carven things upon them. The hunter
shall know the camping-places of the
nomads by the marks of the camp-fires
on the plain, but he shall not know the
place of Zaccarath."

A few of the recumbent warriors turned
their heads to glance at the prophet when
he ceased. Far overhead the echoes of
his voice hummed on awhile among the
cedarn rafters.

"Is he not splendid?" said the King.
And many of that assembly beat with

222 A DREAMER'S TALES

their palms upon the polished floor in
token of applause. Then the prophet
was conducted back to his place at the
far end of that mighty hall, and for a
while musicians played on marvellous
curved horns, while drums throbbed
behind them hidden in a recess. The
musicians were sitting cross-legged on
the floor, all blowing their huge horns in
the brilliant torchlight, but as the drums
throbbed louder in the dark they arose
and moved slowly nearer to the King.
Louder and louder drummed the drums
in the dark, and nearer and nearer moved
the men with the horns, so that their
music should not be drowned by the
drums before it reached the King.

A marvellous scene it was when the
tempestuous horns were halted before the
King, and the drums in the dark were
like the thunder of God ; and the queens

IN ZACCARATH 223

were nodding their heads in time to the
music, with their diadems flashing like
heavens of falling stars ; and the warriors
lifted their heads and shook, as they lifted
them, the plumes of those golden birds
which hunters wait for by the Liddian
lakes, in a whole lifetime killing scarcely
six, to make the crests that the warriors
wore when they feasted in Zaccarath.
Then the King shouted and the warriors
sang — almost they remembered then old
battle-chants. And, as they sang, the
sound of the drums dwindled, and the
musicians walked away backwards, and
the drumming became fainter and fainter
as they walked, and altogether ceased, and
they blew no more on their fantastic
horns. Then the assemblage beat on the
floor with their palms. And afterwards
the queens besought the King to send
for another prophet. And the heralds

224 A DREAMER'S TALES

brought a singer, and placed him before
the King ; and the singer was a young
man with a harp. And he swept the
strings of it, and when there was silence
he sang of the iniquity of the King. And
he foretold the onrush of the Zeedians, and
the fall and the forgetting of Zaccarath, and
the coming again of the desert to its own,
and the playing about of little lion cubs
where the courts of the palace had stood.

" Of what is he singing ? " said a
queen to a queen.

" He is singing of everlasting Zaccarath."

As the singer ceased the assemblage
beat listlessly on the floor, and the King
nodded to him, and he departed.

When all the prophets had prophesied
to them and all the singers sung, that
royal company arose and went to other
chambers, leaving the hall of festival to
the pale and lonely dawn. And alone

IN ZACCARATH 225

were left the lion-headed gods that were
carven out of the walls ; silent they stood,
and their rocky arms were folded. And
shadows over their faces moved like curious
thoughts as the torches flickered and the
dull dawn crossed the fields. And the
colours began to change in the chandeliers.

When the last lutanist fell asleep the
birds began to sing.

Never was greater splendour or a
more famous hall. When the queens
went away through the curtained door
with all their diadems, it was as though
the stars should arise in their stations
and troop together to the West at sunrise.

And only the other day I found a stone
that had undoubtedly been a part of Zac-
carath ; it was three inches long and an
inch broad ; I saw the edge of it un-
covered by the sand. I believe that only
three other pieces have been found like it.

THE FIELD

WHEN one has seen Spring's blossom fall
in London, and Summer appear and ripen
and decay, as it does early in cities, and
one is in London still, then, at some
moment or another, the country places
lift their flowery heads and call to one
with an urgent, masterful clearness, upland
behind upland in the twilight like to some
heavenly choir arising rank on rank to call
a drunkard from his gambling-hell.

No volume of traffic can drown the
sound of it, no lure of London can weaken
its appeal. Having heard it one's fancy
is gone, and evermore departed, to some
coloured pebble a-gleam in a rural brook,
and all that London can offer is swept from

THE FIELD 227

one's mind like some suddenly smitten
metropolitan Goliath.

The call is from afar both in leagues
and years, for the hills that call one are
the hills that were, and their voices are
the voices of long ago, when the elf-kings
still had horns.

I see them now, those hills of my infancy
(for it is they that call), with their faces
upturned to the purple twilight, and the
faint diaphanous figures of the fairies peer-
ing out from under the bracken to see if
evening is come. I do not see upon their
regal summits those desirable mansions,
and highly desirable residences, which
have lately been built for gentlemen who
would exchange customers for tenants.

When the hills called I used to go to
them by road, riding a bicycle. If you go
by train you miss the gradual approach,
you do not cast off London like an old

228 A DREAMER'S TALES

forgiven sin, nor pass by little villages
on the way that must have some rumour
of the hills ; nor, wondering if they are
still the same, come at last upon the edge
of their far-spread robes, and so on to
their feet, and see far off their holy,
welcoming faces. In the train you see
them suddenly round a curve, and there
they all are sitting in the sun.

I imagine that as one penetrated out
from some enormous forest of the tropics,
the wild beasts would become fewer, the
gloom would lighten, and the horror of
the place would slowly lift. Yet as one
emerges nearer to the edge of London,
and nearer to the beautiful influence of
the hills, the houses become uglier, the
streets viler, the gloom deepens, the errors
of civilisation stand bare to the scorn of
the fields.

Where ugliness reaches the height of

THE FIELD 229

its luxuriance, in the dense misery of the
place, where one imagines the builder
saying, " Here I culminate. Let us give
thanks to Satan," there is a bridge of
yellow brick, and through it, as through
some gate of filigree silver opening on
fairyland, one passes into the country.

To left and right, as far as one can see,
stretches that monstrous city ; before one
are the fields like an old, old song.

There is a field there that is full of
king-cups. A stream runs through it, and
along the stream is a little wood of oziers.
There I used often to rest at the stream's
edge before my long journey to the hills.

There I used to forget London, street
by street. Sometimes I picked a bunch
of king-cups to show them to the hills.

I often came there. At first I noticed
nothing about the field except its beauty
and its peacefulness.

23o A DREAMER'S TALES

But the second time that I came I
thought there was something ominous
about the field.

Down there among the king-cups by
the little shallow stream I felt that some-
thing terrible might happen in just such a
place.

I did not stay long there, because I
thought that too much time spent in
London had brought on these morbid
fancies, and I went on to the hills as fast
as I could.

I stayed for some days in the country
air, and when I came back 1 went to the
field again to enjoy that peaceful spot
before entering London. But there was
still something ominous among the oziers.

A year elapsed before I went there
again. I emerged from the shadow of
London into the gleaming sun, the bright
green grass and the king-cups were flaming

THE FIELD 231

in the light, and the little stream was
singing a happy song. But the moment
I stepped into the field my old uneasiness
returned, and worse than before. It was
as though the shadow was brooding there
of some dreadful future thing, and a year
had brought it nearer.

I reasoned that the exertion of bi-
cycling might be bad for one, and that the
moment one rested this uneasiness might
result.

A little later I came back past the field
by night, and the song of the stream in
the hush attracted me down to it. And
there the fancy came to me that it would
be a terribly cold place to be in in the
starlight, if for some reason one was hurt
and could not get away.

I knew a man who was minutely
acquainted with the past history of that
locality, and him I asked if anything

232 A DREAMER'S TALES

historical had ever happened in that field.
When he pressed me for my reason in
asking him this, I said that the field had
seemed to me such a good place to hold
a pageant in. But he said that nothing
of any interest had ever occurred there,
nothing at all.

So it was from the future that the field's
trouble came.

For three years off and on I made visits
to the field, and every time more clearly it
boded evil things, and my uneasiness grew
more acute every time that I was lured to
go and rest among the cool green grass
under the beautiful oziers. Once to dis-
tract my thoughts I tried to gauge how
fast the stream was trickling, but I found
myself wondering if it flowed faster than
blood.

I felt that it would be a terrible place to
go mad in, one would hear voices.

THE FIELD 233

At last I went to a poet whom I knew,
and woke him from huge dreams, and put
before him the whole case of the field.
He had not been out of London all that
year, and he promised to come with me
and look at the field, and tell me what was
going to happen there. It was late in
July when we went. The pavement, the
air, the houses and the dirt had been all
baked dry by the summer, the weary traffic
dragged on, and on, and on, and Sleep
spreading her wings soared up and floated
from London and went to walk beautifully
in rural places.

When the poet saw the field he was
delighted, the flowers were out in masses
all along the stream, he went down to the
little wood rejoicing. By the side of the
stream he stood and seemed very sad.
Once or twice he looked up and down it
mournfully, then he bent and looked at the

234 A DREAMER'S TALES

king-cups, first one and then another, very
closely, and shaking his head.

For a long while he stood in silence,
and all my old uneasiness returned, and
my bodings for the future.

And then I said " What manner of field

• • . •> »
is it?

And he shook his head sorrowfully.
" It is a battlefield," he said.

THE DAY OF THE POLL

IN the town by the sea it was the day of
the poll, and the poet regarded it sadly
when he woke and saw the light of it
coming in at his window between two
small curtains of gauze. And the day of
the poll was beautifully bright ; stray
bird -songs came to the poet at the
window ; the air was crisp and wintry,
but it was the blaze of sunlight that had
deceived the birds. He heard the sound
of the sea that the moon led up the
shore, dragging the months away over
the pebbles and shingles and piling them
up with the years where the worn-out
centuries lay ; he saw the majestic downs
stand facing mightily southwards ; he

335

236 A DREAMER'S TALES

saw the smoke of the town float up to
their heavenly faces — column after column
rose calmly into the morning as house by
house was waked by peering shafts of the
sunlight and lit its fires for the day ;
column by column went up toward the
serene downs' faces, and failed before
they came there and hung all white over
houses ; and every one in the town was
raving mad.

It was a strange thing that the poet
did, for he hired the largest motor in
the town and covered it with all the
flags he could find, and set out to save
an intelligence. And he presently found
a man whose face was hot, who shouted
that the time was not far distant when
a candidate, whom he named, would be
returned at the head of the poll by a
thumping majority. And by him the
poet stopped and offered him a seat in

THE DAY OF THE POLL 237

the motor that was covered with flags.
When the man saw the flags that were
on the motor, and that it was the largest
in the town, he got in. He said that his
vote should be given for that fiscal system
that had made us what we are, in order
that the poor man's food should not be
taxed to make the rich man richer. Or
else it was that he would give his vote
for that system of tariff reform which
should unite us closer to our colonies
with ties that should long endure, and
give employment to all. But it was not
to the polling-booth that that motor went,
it passed it and left the town and came
by a small white winding road to the very
top of the downs. There the poet dis-
missed the car and led that wondering
voter on to the grass and seated himself
on a rug. And for long the voter talked
of those imperial traditions that our

238 A DREAMER'S TALES

forefathers had made for us and which he
should uphold with his vote, or else it
was of a people oppressed by a feudal
system that was out of date and effete,
and that should be ended or mended.
But the poet pointed out to him small,
distant, wandering ships on the sunlit
strip of sea, and the birds far down below
them, and the houses below the birds,
with the little columns of smoke that could
not find the downs.

And at first the voter cried for his
polling-booth like a child ; but after a
while he grew calmer, save when faint
bursts of cheering came twittering up to
the downs, when the voter would cry
out bitterly against the misgovernment
of the Radical party, or else it was — I
forget what the poet told me — he ex-
tolled its splendid record.

"See," said the poet, "these ancient

THE DAY OF THE POLL 239

beautiful things, the downs and the old-
time houses and the morning, and the
grey sea in the sunlight going mumbling
round the world. And this is the place
they have chosen to go mad in ! "

And standing there with all broad
England behind him, rolling northward,
down after down, and before him the
glittering sea too far for the sound of
the roar of it, there seemed to the voter
to grow less important the questions that
troubled the town. Yet he was still
angry.

" Why did you bring me here ? " he
said again.

" Because I grew lonely," said the poet,
" when all the town went mad."

Then he pointed out to the voter some
old bent thorns, and showed him the way
that a wind had blown for a million years,
coming up at dawn from the sea ; and he

240 A DREAMER'S TALES

told him of the storms that visit the ships,
and their names and whence they come,
and the currents they drive afield, and the
way that the swallows go. And he spoke
of the down where they sat, when the
summer came, and the flowers that were
not yet, and the different butterflies, and
about the bats and the swifts, and the
thoughts in the heart of man. He spoke
of the aged windmill that stood on the
down, and of how to children it seemed
a strange old man who was only dead
by day. And as he spoke, and as the
sea-wind blew on that high and lonely
place, there began to slip away from the
voter's mind meaningless phrases that had
crowded it long — thumping majority —
victory in the fight — terminological in-
exactitudes— and the smell of paraffin
lamps dangling in heated schoolrooms,
and quotations taken from ancient

THE DAY OF THE POLL 241

speeches because the words were long.
They fell away, though slowly, and
slowly the voter saw a wider world and
the wonder of the sea. And the after-
noon wore on, and the winter evening
came, and the night fell, and all black
grew the sea ; and about the time that
the stars come blinking out to look upon
our littleness, the polling-booth closed in
the town.

When they got back the turmoil was
on the wane in the streets ; night hid the
glare of the posters ; and the tide, finding
the noise abated and being at the flow,
told an old tale that he had learned in
his youth about the deeps of the sea,
the same which he had told to coastwise
ships that brought it to Babylon by the
way of Euphrates before the doom of
Troy.

I blame my friend the poet, however

Q

242 A DREAMER'S TALES

lonely he was, for preventing this man
from registering his vote (the duty of
every citizen) ; but perhaps it matters
less, as it was a foregone conclusion,
because the losing candidate, either
through poverty or sheer madness, had
neglected to subscribe to a single football
club.

THE UNHAPPY BODY

" WHY do you not dance with us and
rejoice with us?" they said to a certain
body. And then that body made the
confession of its trouble. It said : "I
am united with a fierce and violent soul,
that is altogether tyrannous and will not
let me rest, and he drags me away from
the dances of my kin to make me toil
at his detestable work ; and he will not
let me do the little things that would
give pleasure to the folk I love, but only
cares to please posterity when he has
done with me and left me to the worms ;
and all the while he makes absurd de-
mands of affection from those that are
near to me, and is too proud even to

244 A DREAMER'S TALES

notice any less than he demands, so that
those that should be kind to me all hate
me." And the unhappy body burst into
tears.

And they said : " No sensible body
cares for its soul. A soul is a little thing,
and should not rule a body. You should
drink and smoke more till he ceases to
trouble you." But the body only wept,
and said, " Mine is a fearful soul. I have
driven him away for a little while with
drink. But he will soon come back. Oh,
he will soon come back ! "

And the body went to bed hoping to
rest, for it was drowsy with drink. But
just as sleep was near it, it looked up, and
there was its soul sitting on the window-
sill, a misty blaze of light, and looking
into the street.

" Come," said that tyrannous soul, "and
look into the street."

THE UNHAPPY BODY 245

" I have need of sleep," said the body.

" But the street is a beautiful thing,"
the soul said vehemently ; " a hundred
of the people are dreaming there."

" I am ill through want of rest," the
body said.

" That does not matter," the soul said
to it. " There are millions like you in
the earth, and millions more to go there.
The people's dreams are wandering afield ;
they pass the seas and the mountains of
faery, threading the intricate passes led by
their souls ; they come to golden temples
a-ring with a thousand bells ; they pass up
steep streets lit by paper lanterns, where
the doors are green and small ; they know
their way to witches' chambers and castles
of enchantment ; they know the spell that
brings them to the causeway along the
ivory mountains — on one side looking
downward they behold the fields of their

Q 2

246 A DREAMER'S TALES

youth, and on the other lie the radiant
plains of the future. Arise and write
down what the people dream."

" What reward is there for me," said
the body, "if I write down what you
bid me ? "

" There is no reward," said the soul.

" Then I shall sleep," said the body.

And the soul began to hum an idle
song sung by a young man in a fabulous
land as he passed a golden city (where
fiery sentinels stood), and knew that his
wife was within it, though as yet but a
little child, and knew by prophecy that
furious wars, not yet arisen in far and
unknown mountains, should roll above
him with their dust and thirst before he
ever came to that city again — the young
man sang it as he passed the gate, and
was now dead with his wife a thousand
years.

THE UNHAPPY BODY 247

" I cannot sleep for that abominable
song," the body cried to the soul.

" Then do as you are commanded,"
the soul replied. And wearily the body
took a pen again. Then the soul spoke
merrily as he looked through the win-
dow. " There is a mountain lifting sheer
above London, part crystal and part mist.
Thither the dreamers go when the sound
of the traffic has fallen. At first they
scarcely dream because of the roar of it,
but before midnight it stops, and turns,
and ebbs with all its wrecks. Then the
dreamers arise and scale the shimmering
mountain, and at its summit find the
galleons of dream. Thence some sail
East, some West, some into the Past and
some into the Future, for the galleons
sail over the years as well as over the
spaces, but mostly they head for the Past
and the olden harbours, for thither the

248 A DREAMER'S TALES

sighs of men are mostly turned, and the
dream-ships go before them, as the mer-
chantmen before the continual trade-winds
go down the African coast. I see the
galleons even now raise anchor after
anchor ; the stars flash by them ; they
slip out of the night ; their prows go
gleaming into the twilight of memory,
and night soon lies far off, a black cloud
hanging low, and faintly spangled with
stars, like the harbour and shore of some
low-lying land seen afar with its harbour
lights."

Dream after dream that soul related
as he sat there by the window. He told
of tropical forests seen by unhappy men
who could not escape from London, and
never would — forests made suddenly won-
drous by the song of some passing bird
flying to unknown eeries and singing an
unknown song. He saw the old men

THE UNHAPPY BODY 249

lightly dancing to the tune of elfin pipes
— beautiful dances with fantastic maidens
— all night on moonlit imaginary moun-
tains ; he heard far off the music of glit-
tering Springs ; he saw the fairness of
blossoms of apple and may thirty years
fallen ; he heard old voices — old tears
came glistening back ; Romance sat
cloaked and crowned upon southern hills,
and the soul knew him.

One by one he told the dreams of all
that slept in that street. Sometimes he
stopped to revile the body because it
worked badly and slowly. Its chill fingers
wrote as fast as they could, but the soul
cared not for that. And so the night
wore on till the soul heard tinkling in
Oriental skies far footfalls of the morn-
ing.

" See now," said the soul, " the dawn
that the dreamers dread. The sails of

250 A DREAMER'S TALES

light are paling on those unwreckable
galleons ; the mariners that steer them
slip back into fable and myth ; that other
sea the traffic is turning now at its ebb,
and is about to hide its pallid wrecks,
and to come swinging back, with its
tumult, at the flow. Already the sunlight
flashes in the gulfs behind the east of
the world ; the gods have seen it from
their palace of twilight that they built
above the sunrise ; they warm their hands
at its glow as it streams through their
gleaming arches, before it reaches the
world ; all the gods are there that have
ever been, and all the gods that shall be ;
they sit there in the morning, chanting
and praising Man."

" I am numb and very cold for want
of sleep," said the body.

" You shall have centuries of sleep,"
said the soul, " but you must not sleep

THE UNHAPPY BODY 251

now, for I have seen deep meadows with
purple flowers flaming tall and strange
above the brilliant grass, and herds of
pure white unicorns that gambol there
for joy, and a river running by with a
glittering galleon on it, all of gold, that
goes from an unknown inland to an un-
known isle of the sea to take a song from
the King of Over-the-Hills to the Queen
of Far- Away.

" I will sing that song to you, and you
shall write it down."

" I have toiled for you for years," the
body said. " Give me now but one
night's rest, for I am exceeding weary."

" Oh, go and rest. I am tired of you.
I am off," said the soul.

And he arose and went, we know
not whither. But the body they laid
in the earth. And the next night at
midnight the wraiths of the dead came

252 A DREAMER'S TALES

drifting from their tombs to felicitate
that body.

" You are free here, you know," they
said to their new companion.

"Now I can rest," said the body.

THE END

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &• Co,

Edinburgh & London

Dunsany, Edward John Moreton
6007 Drax Plunkett

U6D7 A dreamer's tales

of Toronto Rob arts

Aug

9-S

HAMEs

illCHAEL SHIHER